Memoir of Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison

The
Balfbur Lectures on Realism

Photo by

E. H. Yerbur/j A Son, Edinburgh

The
Balfour Lectures on Realism

^Delivered in the University of Edinburgh

BY

A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON

LL.D., D.C.L.

FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSIC

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

EDITED, WITH A

Memoir of the Author

BY

G. F. BARBOUR

D.PHIL. EDIN.

EDINBURGH AND LONDON
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD 6- SONS LTD.

1933

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
ALL EIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE.

AMONG the writings of Professor Pringle-Pattison which
never appeared in a permanent form during his lifetime
the most important was the Third Series of Balfour
Lectures. These were delivered early in 1891, six
months before his transference from the Chair of Logic
in the University of St Andrews to the corresponding
Chair in Edinburgh. The history of the Balfour Lecture
ship, and some indications of the reasons which prevented
Professor Seth, as he then was, from publishing these
Lectures on Realism as the sequel to Scottish Philosophy
and Hegelianism and Personality, will be found in
Chapter IV. of the Memoir which forms the earlier part
of the present volume. So they need not be set out at
length here. But it is well to state in a sentence the
reasons which have led to their publication now. They
not only complete a series of Lectures the earlier instal
ments of which awakened keen interest at the date of
their publication and for long after, but they fill a
considerable gap in the record of Professor Pringle-
Pattison's philosophical development, and show how he
regarded the problems of Epistemology at the end of
his first period as a teacher and writer. Although they
have not before appeared in volume form, they were
published in the Philosophical Review, under the editor
ship of Dr J. G. Schurman ; and those responsible for

vi PREFACE

this volume desire to thank the present editor of the
Review, and the authorities of Cornell University, by
whom it is published, for their courtesy in allowing the
Lectures to be reprinted here.

Although the Memoir is not a long one, the number
of those who have helped in its preparation is very
considerable. The contribution of those who have
placed letters at my disposal will be estimated by the
reader of the Memoir itself ; but I wish to express my
special indebtedness to Mr Norman Pringle-Pattison
and other members of Professor Pringle-Pattison's
family who have given the most generous assistance ;
to Mrs John MacCunn, Mr J. B. Capper and Mr R. P.
Hardie for valuable information and other help ; and
to Mr William Menzies for the account of the St Andrews
professorship which forms the greater part of Chapter V.
I am also greatly indebted to Mrs Edgar Dugdale, who
has given on behalf of the late Earl of Balfour's literary
executors permission to make free use of the correspond
ence extending over many years between Lord Balfour
and Professor Pringle-Pattison ; and I would extend
not less hearty thanks to Miss Haldane for similar per
mission to use letters to and from Viscount Haldane,
and to Mrs de Glehn and Mr R. C. Bosanquet, who
have kindly allowed me to include in Chapter XL
unpublished letters of great value from Mr F. H. Bradley
and Professor Bernard Bosanquet respectively.

G. F. BARBOUR.

FINCASTLE, PERTHSHIRE,
September 1933.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE .... v

MEMOIR.

CHAP.

I. EARLY YEARS. 1856-1878 3

II. GERMANY. 1878-1880 2I

III. EDINBURGH AND CARDIFF. 1880-1887 • - 33

IV. THE BALFOUR LECTURES. 1884-189! . . 47
V. ST ANDREWS. 1887-189! 58

VI. FIRST YEARS IN THE EDINBURGH CHAIR. 1891-

1897 • 70

VII. THE HAINING. 1898-1914 §3
VIII. UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND CORRESPONDENCE

WITH FRIENDS. 1898-1914 «... 93

IX. GIFFORD LECTURES ON THEISM. 1912-1917 . 115

X. THE WAR YEARS. 1914-1918 . . . .125

XI. LATER GIFFORD LECTURES. 1919-1923 . . 136

XII. CLOSING YEARS. 1923-1931 . . . .149

viii CONTENTS

THE BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM.

LECTURE PAGE

I. PSYCHOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS . 163

The need for a clear distinction between Psychology
and the Theory of Knowledge — Distinction between
the two inquiries drawn by Descartes and Locke —
Locke's subsequent confusion of them — The reference
of ideas to a world of reality — How this is dealt with
by subjective idealists, e.g., Mill — Psychology is
either purely subjective, or (physiological or experi
mental psychology) purely objective — Epistemology
deals with the reference to reality, i.e., the validity
of knowledge — Note on the terms, Epistemology,
Philosophy, Ontology — Epistemology, a preliminary
investigation, clearing the way for Metaphysics — Dis
tinction to be observed between the use in Episte
mology and Metaphysics of the terms, Phenomenon,
Idealism — Consistent epistemological Idealism leads
to Solipsism — Epistemological Realism makes meta
physical Idealism possible — Hegelian thought and
Realism in its Scottish form alike defective here.

II. THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY . . . 183

Knowledge is subjective as a state or process of the
knowing being — But it involves an objective refer
ence — Fundamental doubts as to the possibility of
knowledge — Hume and Spencer on the Realism of
ordinary thinking — The attitude of Reid — Per
ception not explained by the supposition of an un-
differentiated, primordial sensuous consciousness —
Function of activity, of effort against resistance, in
the genesis of knowledge — Epistemological Idealism
only exists as a criticism of Realism — A critical
Realism the one sane Theory of Knowledge — Subject
and object are united in knowledge, but distinct in
existence — The self, a principle both of isolation and
communion — Objects not ' present in ' consciousness
— Meaning of the trans-subjective — The assertion of
immediate perception no real solution of the problem.

CONTENTS ix

III. EPISTEMOLOGY IN LOCKE AND KANT . . . 2OI

Locke's hypothetical Realism — Distinction between
' idea ' and ' idea of a thing/ ignored by Locke and
denied by Hume — Origin in Locke of the doctrine of
representative perception — His other and sounder
doctrine that knowledge is of things, not of ideas
only — Development of the former by Berkeley and
Hume — Place of the thing-in-itself in Kant's system —
His distinction between his doctrine and ' Idealism ' —
His criticism of Fichte's subjectivism — Yet he main
tains the phenomenalism which marked one side of
Locke's thinking — His emphasis on the receptive
character of human understanding — Identification of
the ' phenomenal object ' with real things — Kant's
neglect of the ' given,' a posteriori, element in cogni
tion — What he means by ' experience ' — Material
things are, for him, simply spatially arranged per
ceptions — His doctrine and Berkeley's, similarity and
difference — His conception of objectivity ambiguous —
Recognition by others as a test of trans-subjective
reality — ' Consciousness in general/ a pure abstrac
tion.

IV. THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF NEO-KANTIANISM AND

SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM ..... 225

Criticism of the Kantian thing-in-itself by Jacobi and
others — Parallel between the post-Lockian and post-
Kantian developments — In Neo-Kantian thought
the necessity for a transcendental object is subjective
only — Its reduction by Cohen to a purely formal
unity, or object-in-general — Similar reduction of the
subject to a notion or category — Cohen's doctrine of
the self -rounding world of experience — Its lack of
any real basis in reality — Lange's hesitating attempt
to provide this — The final result in Vaihinger's
' Critical Scepticism ' — Existence there appears as a
self-evolving, unsupported illusion — Experience can
not be thus divorced from the trans-subjective —
Intruding percepts as signs of causal connections out
side consciousness — Error of interpreting experience
in purely immanent terms — The conception of Know
ledge dependent on the trans-subjective — Mill's
attempt to provide this within the limits of Empiri-

CONTENTS

cism — Ambiguous character of his ' possible sensa
tions ' — His covert reintroduction of trans-subjective
reality — Experience not equivalent to Knowledge —
Spencer's statement of the distinction as against
Mill and Bain — We can know an object without
being it — Neglect of Kant's theory of judgment and
the activity of Reason by his idealist followers.

CONCLUSION . 253

Forms of knowledge must correspond to forms of
existence unless knowledge is to defeat its own
object — Duality of knowledge does not imply meta
physical Dualism — Kant's rejection of pre-established
harmony — The world, not a brute fact external to
the divine Mind.

MEMOIR

OF

ANDREW SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON

BY

G. F. BARBOUR

CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS.

1856-1878.

ANDREW SETH— in later life ANDREW SETH PRINGLE-
PATTISON — was born at i West Claremont Street,
Edinburgh, on December 20, 1856. Unlike that great
philosopher who would never acknowledge his birth
day, because he felt that it linked him too closely
to a vanishing and illusory world, Seth felt a quiet
pride in those forebears whose life formed the back
ground of his own. Nor can his character be fully
understood without some reference to that vigorous,
if austere, intellectual and religious life which through
out the nineteenth century sent forth so many lads of
Scottish country stock to be leaders of thought and
action in their own and other lands. The soil in which
his life had its roots is described in the opening sen
tences of a brief Memoir of his younger brother James,
which he wrote in 1925 — sentences which may be
quoted here, since they are equally applicable to himself.
He was the second son of Smith Kinmont Seth and
Margaret Little, the eldest having died in infancy.
" Although by birth a townsman, he came both on the
father's and the mother's side of country stock. His
paternal grandfather, William Seth, was a well-to-do
farmer in the east of Fife, latterly at Rires, near Kil-
conquhar, and many of the boy's happiest memories

4 MEMOIR

were of long summer holidays there and the noble
prospect of the Firth of Forth which the place com
manded. His mother's family had been connected
for several generations with Langholm, on the Scottish
Border, where they owned some land. His maternal
grandfather, Andrew Little, after a voyage to America
in 1805 to investigate prospects there, eventually
settled near Lauder in Berwickshire, where, with the
aid of one of his brothers, who remained unmarried, he
purchased the farm of Middle Blainslie in 1814. The
two brothers farmed the place together till 1848, when
they found themselves able to retire to Edinburgh with
a small competence. Margaret, the youngest but one
of Andrew's children, was then in her eighteenth year.
Smith Seth, her future husband, the youngest of a large
family, had entered the service of one of the Scottish
banks, and removed to Edinburgh about the same
time, or soon after, on his appointment to a clerkship
in the Head Office of the Commercial Bank there.
The two were married in 1854, and • • • of their family
of seven, four sons and two daughters grew up to man
hood and womanhood/' l

When Andrew was still in early childhood his father
passed through a serious illness, and thereafter the
parents were advised to move from the north of the
city to a district on the south side, at a higher altitude
and above the mist and ' haar ' from the Firth of Forth
which so often enshrouds the valley of the Water of
Leith. His father's health improved, and after more
than one move the family remained in the pleasant
Grange district, where they were within easy reach
of the home of the maternal grandparents in Dick
Place. Through the seventies they lived at 13 Mansion-
house Road.

1 Essays in Ethics and Religion, by James Seth, edited with a
Memoir by A. S. Pringle-Pattison, ad init.

MEMOIR 5

Andrew was from the first a child of bright and
eager mind. He knew his letters at two, and could
read in his fifth year. This suggests the precocious
mental history of John Stuart Mill half a century
before ; but happily his subsequent development,
though always rapid, became more normally so. When
he went to school, his mother, though herself of notably
active mind, found it hard to keep abreast of his read
ing. He seems to have escaped the critical intolerance
which is a besetting fault of quickly developing youth,
for his younger brothers and sisters, including two
who were his juniors by twelve or fifteen years, always
remembered his invariable humility and helpfulness,
which they felt were inherited, not from one parent,
but from both. The younger brothers and sisters of
his friends were impressed by the same thoughtful
kindness, and came to love him hardly less than did
the members of his own family.

After attending a small private school near his home,
he went to the Royal High School, associated with the
early days of Scott, and one of the leading Secondary
Schools of Edinburgh. His years there were filled with
hard study, his chief recreation being the long walks
on which he accompanied his father or school friends.
Sometimes he played shinty, a form of hockey native
to Scotland, and distinguished from the English game
by its freedom from rules for the protection of life and
limb.

The Rector of the High School in Seth's day was
James Donaldson, afterwards Principal Sir James
Donaldson of St Andrews. Another future Principal
of a Scottish University, Sir George Adam Smith, was
a pupil at the High School, but, though only a few weeks
older than Seth, was a year ahead both at school and
college. In the Rector's class in Classics, however,
which comprised the two senior years, they found

6 MEMOIR

themselves together. Another class-fellow, whose course
ran pan passu with Seth's and whose friendship he
valued increasingly during more than sixty years, was
John Brainerd Capper, the son of an English artist
in impaired health, who had settled in Edinburgh
mainly for the education of his children. " We lived
not far apart," Mr Capper writes, " and our evenings
were often spent in coaching each other for examina
tions in which we were both to compete, all special
knowledge individually acquired being thrown into a
common stock." * In the final year in the High School
(1872-3), Capper beat Seth by a very narrow margin
in the comprehensive examination for the High School
Club Prize ; but neither gained the Dux medal, then
awarded to the head of the Latin class alone. It went to
a boy who concentrated for the purpose on that special
subject, whereas the two friends aimed at a wider
circle of attainment. In those days the Scottish schools
and universities already treated English literature as
a central subject, and it was often admirably taught
— a feature of their work which did not a little to out
weigh the more profound classical scholarship of the
English Public Schools. The senior English master in
the High School, John Merry Ross, was one of these
thorough and inspiring teachers of English ; and the
love of Latin and Greek which Seth acquired in Donald
son's class was at least equalled by the appreciation
of English poetry which Ross did much to awaken.

Seth went on with Capper and A. M. Stalker, another
close friend, to the University of Edinburgh in the late
autumn of 1873. More than fifty years later a dis
tinguished colleague of Seth's, Professor W. P. Pater-
son, described how, as a younger boy at the Royal
High School, he had watched " that colossal figure

1 Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (Proceedings of the British Academy,
Vol. xvii.).

MEMOIR 7

leaving the School to pass on to the University, covering
himself with glory/' The University was in those days,
as Professor Paterson added, " a remarkable nursery
and feeding-ground of talent/' It was passing through
a period of change, though many years were still to pass
before some of the more important developments were
completed.

There was as yet no University Union or University
residence ; for most students there was little social
and no athletic life. But the intellectual life was
of the keenest, and there was full opportunity
for independent reading, as well as unhurried com
panionship, in the long vacation which followed the
six strenuous months of the winter. In the Faculty
of Arts the graduation course was strictly prescribed,
every student being required to pass in Humanity
(Latin), Greek, English Literature, Logic and Meta
physics, Moral Philosophy, Mathematics, and Natural
Philosophy (Physics). Only when these seven subjects
had been gone through on the Pass standard was it
possible to take additional subjects or to read for
Honours. This standard was not, indeed, a severe one,
and much of the work in the ordinary classes was of
the type now covered in Secondary Schools ; yet, for
a student beginning at fifteen or sixteen, as was then
usual, and proceeding to Honours, the course was
exacting enough, and for the few who, like Seth, took
two Honours groups, the years of student life were
crowded and strenuous.

The professors in the Faculty of Arts in the seventies
formed a distinguished group. Tait, the Professor of
Natural Philosophy, was the friend and fellow-worker
of Kelvin, and one of the greatest scientific teachers
of his time. Blackie, in the Greek chair, was a pic
turesque figure, about whom many legends gathered.
But the three professors who, by personality and teach-

8 MEMOIR

ing, left a deep impress on the life of Andrew Seth were
William Young Sellar, David Masson and Alexander
Campbell Fraser. The training in Latin begun under
Donaldson was continued under Sellar, a man whose
genial and generous nature was clothed in something
of the gravitas of the old Roman world, and whose
friendship enriched the life of his pupil for many years.
In visits to the home of Sellar and his brilliant wife,
the foundation was laid of a later and lifelong friend
ship ; for in after years one of the daughters of the
house, Mrs John MacCunn, and her husband, the Pro
fessor of Philosophy in the University of Liverpool,
took a special place in the inner circle of his intimates.

The Professor of English Literature was also a man
of distinguished character and achievement, once de
scribed by Thomas Carry le in these words : c< David
Masson, sincere and sure of purpose ; very brave, for
he has undertaken to write a history of the universe
from 1608 to 1674, calling it a Life of John Milton." l
Sellar's treatment of Lucretius and Virgil, and Masson's
of Milton and Wordsworth, together led Seth towards
that view of the unity of the highest poetic and philo
sophic insight which is implicit in much of his writing,
and to which he gave deliberate expression in the
Preface to his Gifford Lectures on The Idea of God.
The teaching of these two men helped also to mould
that admirable prose style — always clear and felicitous
and not seldom eloquent — which never failed him
during fifty years of authorship.2

But the master influence of his years at the University
was that of Campbell Fraser, whose class he entered
in 1874, and whom he succeeded as Professor of Logic
and Metaphysics seventeen years later. In Sir James

1 Quoted by Campbell Fraser, Biographia Philosophica, p. 246.
B Cf. Lord Haldane's tribute to these men, especially Sellar, in his
Autobiography, pp. 6-8.

MEMOIR 9

Barrie's An Edinburgh Eleven there is a witty descrip
tion of the venerable professor who taught self-confident
undergraduates to " wonder if they existed strictly
so-called," and who " led his classes into strange places and
said he would meet them there again next day." But he
continues in a more serious vein, " Metaphysics may not
trouble you, as it troubles him, but you do not sit under
the man without seeing his transparent honesty and
feeling that he is genuine. In appearance and in habit
of thought he is an ideal philosopher, and his com-
munings with himself have lifted him to a level of
serenity that is worth struggling for."

Campbell Eraser's character and teaching are clearly
reflected in his Biogmphia Philosophica, a book which
is less known than its remarkable qualities warrant.
Its opening chapter records the memories of a boy in
the Highland manse of Ardchattan, first looking out
on the wonder of the universe in days when George IV.
was on the throne, and when it was still possible to talk
with a venerable lady who had reached womanhood
when her brother was killed at Culloden, or with a man
who had guided Johnson and Boswell in their journey
across Lorn. It ends with the retrospect of a philosopher
who in his eighty-fifth year is able to say, " The per
plexing doubts about the universe, in which I newly
found myself in youth, have led to deeper faith in the
immanent Divine Spirit, transforming death from a
movement in the dark into a movement in Omnipotent
Goodness ; trusted when it withdraws us from this
embodied life, still unable to picture what lies in the
future."

But in 1874 the publication of Campbell Eraser's
Philosophy of Theism was twenty, and of his Biogmphia
Philosophica thirty, years off. He had not then given
so clear a form to his ultimate philosophical convic
tions ; but on the basis of his long study of Berkeley

io MEMOIR

he was gradually leading his abler students from an
intellectual interpretation of the world as intelligible,
orderly, trustworthy, to the further conviction that it
subserved the ends of moral and spiritual beings. As
the goal of their progress he pointed to a " rational
Faith- venture," which he later summarised as the
belief that " nature in experience is really the language
of God, and that Divine Order is supreme and universal."
Andrew Seth's debt to Campbell Fraser is best under
stood from the words of his Inaugural Lecture on his
return to Edinburgh in 1891. " Seventeen years ago
I entered the Junior Logic class of this University, with
a mind opening perhaps to literature, but still sub
stantially with a schoolboy's views of existence ; and
there, in the admirably stimulating lectures to which I
listened, a new world seemed to open before me. What
the student most needs at such a period is to be intel
lectually awakened. ... He has to be induced to ask
himself the world-old questions, and to ponder the pos
sible answers. Above all, the listener should be made
to feel that the questions of which the Professor speaks
are not merely information which he communicates—
that they are to him the most real things in the world,
the recurring subjects of his deepest meditation. All
this his students found realised in Professor Fraser 's
teaching. . . . The sense of mystery and complexity in
things, which he brought so vividly home to us, inspired
a wise distrust of extreme positions and of systems all too
perfect for our mortal vision. This union of dialectical
subtlety with a never-failing reverence for all that makes
man man, and elevates him above himself, lives in the
memory of many a pupil as no unworthy realisation of the
ideal spirit of philosophy. I shall count myself happy if,
with his mantle, some portion of his spirit shall be found
to have descended upon his successor. I hope that, in
the days to come, the dingy but famous classroom will

MEMOIR ii

be distinguished as of old by searching intellectual
criticism and impartial debate, not divorced from that
spirit of reverence and humility which alone can lead
us into truth." l

Alongside or even in some measure counter to the
placid stream of Campbell Eraser's Berkeleian theism,
there flowed other currents in the philosophical thought
of this decade in Edinburgh. For living in the city,
though not teaching in the University, was Dr James
Hutchison Stirling, whom Andrew Seth described a few
years later as being " for distinctively metaphysical
acumen probably not surpassed by any man living." 2
This may sound an exaggerated estimate, but it repre
sented the writer's deliberate opinion of the first British
thinker who expounded in a thorough and sympathetic
way the philosophy of Hegel. It is true that the title
of Hutchison Stirling's chief book, The Secret of Hegel
(published in 1865, twelve years before Edward Caird's
Philosophy of Kant], invited the easy witticism that
the Secret had been successfully kept by the learned
author ; but to the keener and more penetrating
students of those years, his pioneer work, followed by
that of Green and Caird, made possible a new under
standing of German idealism. This tendency, in con
trast to the prevailing English empiricism, and to
Campbell Eraser's via media, afforded full scope to the
" searching intellectual criticism and impartial debate "
referred to in the Inaugural Address just quoted. The
chief scene of this debate was the Philosophical Society
of the University. There the name of Robert Adam-
son, afterwards Professor of Logic in Glasgow University,

1 Man's Place in the Cosmos, and Other Essays, p. 25 f. Later in
the same volume (pp. 218 ff.) is reprinted a long appreciation, with
hardly a note of criticism, of Campbell Eraser's Philosophy of Theism,
which Seth contributed to the Quarterly Review in 1898.

2 In an unsigned review in the Scotsman of Dr Stirling's Text-book
to Kant.

12 MEMOIR

who had graduated in 1871, was still mentioned with a
respect not unmingled with awe by those who followed
in the middle seventies ; and of the brilliant group of
that period, D. G. Ritchie, W. R. Sorley and R. B.
Haldane became personal friends of Seth. Fifty years
after, Seth wrote : " Haldane was an active member
of this Society as long as he remained in Edinburgh,
and it was there that I first made his acquaintance,
though it was only later, after my own return from two
years' study in Germany, that our acquaintance ripened
into intimacy and a lifelong friendship." l Another of
the group was Alexander Mitchell Stalker, who found
his life-work in another field, as Professor of Medicine
in University College, Dundee. Stalker had already
at the High School been a class-fellow, and formed a
third in the intimate friendship of Seth and J. B. Capper.
Before referring to the discussions in which the friends
explored the high region where philosophy and theology
meet, we may turn to Seth's tributes to two of the great
writers who made an ineffaceable mark on his mind in
these years. First stands the teaching of Carlyle, in
whom the students of Edinburgh felt an almost personal
pride. Thirty years later Seth wrote, in the Intro
duction to a volume of Carlyle's Essays which he edited :
" The Rectorship of a Scottish University is no hall
mark of literary or philosophical distinction, but when
Carlyle was elected Rector of the University of Edin
burgh in 1865, by the students of his alma mater, it was
instinctively felt to be the fitting tribute of eager and
ingenuous youth to the greatest of living Scotsmen
and one of the chief intellectual and moral forces of
the century. In the seventies (I speak of my own under
graduate days) Carlyle's hold upon the younger genera-

1 R. B. Haldane (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. xiv.).
For the influence of the Philosophical Society, cf. the Memoir of
James Seth already referred to, pp. xvi f.

MEMOIR 13

tion was in no way relaxed. The Goethean psalm of
life, of which he was so fond — and which in his own
rendering has a deeper organ-tone than the original-
still chanted itself in many a youthful heart as a real
' road-melody or marching music of mankind/ '

The unique contribution to his spiritual development
of the poetry of Wordsworth appears clearly in the
record of his vacations of 1874 and the two following
summers. This is preserved in long journals and journal
letters, written in the minute but singularly clear hand
writing which changed its character very little as the
years passed. Earlier holidays had often been spent
at Rires, his own description of which has already been
quoted. In April 1874 he was there again for ten days.
' The weather was superb to idle and loll about the
fields," he notes. " I had In Memoriam and Jane
Eyre with me. My eyes were weak, I remember, and I
wore a green shade." Thus early, unremitting study
had caused that weakness of eyesight which, although
it never caused grave anxiety, troubled him at intervals
throughout life and added to the burden of his work.

In autumn, after spending August at Largs on the
Firth of Clyde, he was back at Rires, and it was then
that, on Capper's recommendation, he took up the
study of Wordsworth. The following winter was a
crowded one, for it included some teaching as well as
much study. During these months, while Campbell
Eraser's lectures were opening the vistas of philosophic
thought before him, " Carlyle's marching music of man
kind " used to ring in his mind on his evening walks
home. " For a long time," he continues, " that was my
main spiritual food. All through the winter I was
engaged in following out everything connected with
the Wordsworths and so becoming acquainted with
Coleridge and De Quincey. Judge of my delight when
the Gray Essay was announced — subject, Wordsworth.

14 MEMOIR

I discovered it one morning in the end of March just
before going to Tait's [class], and at once resolved to
write it ; and the plan soon sprang up of a trip to the
Lakes."

A few days later he crossed the Border for the first
time on a solitary expedition to the Wordsworth country.
After walking from Windermere Station to Ambleside,
he found lodgings—" a delightful parlour and bedroom
(white curtains and other things to match) for los. a
week " ; and his letter expressed the hope that his
mother would not think the room too dear. For a week
he tramped the valleys round, visiting Rydal, Hawks-
head and the many other spots especially associated
with the poet, and exploring the Langdale valley and
the Kirkstone Pass. During the last three days of the
expedition he covered much ground. On the first he
walked by Dunmail Raise to Keswick ; next day he
visited Borrowdale and Southey's grave at Cross-
thwaite ; and on the final morning he climbed Skiddaw
before catching a train north at mid-day.

Through the summer, in the intervals of other work,
Seth was engaged on his essay, which must have been
one of considerable length ; for it was not completed
till late in August at Brodick in the Isle of Arran. The
months of work which he gave to it wrought the poetry
of Wordsworth into the fabric of his thought, and he
speaks of the blending during these months of Carlyle's
prophetic message with the Wordsworthian influence.
This month in Arran (August 1875), like other West
Coast holidays, he spent in reading, varied by some
boating and fishing, two ascents of Goatfell, and other
walks with his father and younger brothers and some
times with other companions. Among these was
Robert Todd, a friend of singularly gracious character,
whose early death not long after was a cause of great
grief to the Seths' whole circle. Twice during the

MEMOIR 15

month Andrew went off for two days — the first time
alone round the north of the island, the second time with
his brother James to the south. On this occasion they
found a hospitable welcome in a farm at Corriecravie
looking towards Ailsa Craig. The journal notes how
heartily the two lads (aged eighteen and fifteen)
were received, how they shared in the warmth of a
glorious peat fire and "listened to the simple, mirth
ful talk " of their kind hosts, as all those who had been
at work on the farm gathered in. Their bedroom, with
its uneven clay floor, opened off the kitchen, and after
a supper of scones, cheese and new milk, they lay in
bed listening to the Gaelic speech in the kitchen, broken
now and then by peals of hearty laughter.

Seth was no naturalist, for botany and zoology
seldom entered into a liberal education in the Scotland
of that day ; but he was keenly observant of the broader
effects of natural scenery as well as of much beauty in
detail, and the influence of Wordsworth comes out in
many a sentence describing light and shadow on hill
and sea, or the changeful aspects of the sky. At one
point he recalls the " absolute terror " which took hold
upon him when, on an earlier visit to Arran in 1871,
he first reached the top of Goatfell and looked down into
Glen Rosa, 2000 feet below, and across to the jagged
peaks which guard its head. His spirit was in a high
degree receptive of the influences of nature in her various
moods.

In the spring of 1876 Seth broke new ground by his
first expedition to the Continent. With a fellow-student,
Thomas Gilray, afterwards a professor of English
Literature in New Zealand, he crossed from Leith to
Rotterdam, whence they made their way to Cologne
and the Rhine. A summer semester at the University of
Heidelberg was the object of their journey ; and from
the first weeks of their residence Seth's letters are full

16 MEMOIR

of appreciation of that German life with which a few
years later he was to form the closest of personal ties.
The beauty of the town and its surroundings, the
inexhaustible walks along the valley of the Neckar,
up the many side valleys which converge upon it, on
the wooded hills above, and the rooms found by the two
Scots lads with wide views from their lofty windows —
these things and many more are described ; nor does the
furniture escape notice, for being less in quantity than
in the British houses of the day, it can be well seen,
and is all of fine quality. Other features appeal to him
less, such as the unpunctual and casual ways of pro
fessors and others — for Prussian efficiency had not
spread to the Rhineland sixty years ago — and, it need
hardly be said, the custom of duelling. Church singing
he feels too slow, and he weighs the arguments for and
against the continental Sunday. " A great many
people/' he writes, " get no rest at all, so that upon the
whole I think the continental peoples wrong themselves
in not having a more complete day of rest. Scotland,
of course, errs nearly as far in the opposite direction.
England, perhaps, hits the mark more nearly."

At the university he highly appreciated the brilliant
lectures of Kuno Fischer, and, soon after the semester
began, reported that he could follow these quite easily.
In July he was going through Fischer's History of
Modern Philosophy at the rate of fifty pages a day,
and by the end of the summer he had not only mastered
German, but laid the foundation of the wide knowledge
of the history of philosophy which served him well in
later years. Through the writings of Carlyle he had
already come to realise the greatness of Goethe, and
closer study of his poems was undertaken as a preparation
for a short visit to Frankfurt after the session closed.

His debt at this time to his mother's sister, Miss
Isabella Little, ought not to pass unnoted, for a series

MEMOIR 17

of long letters is addressed to his " learned aunt " ;
and it is clear that he owed to her not only occasional
financial help, but the stimulating comradeship of an
alert and enterprising mind. It is chiefly in his letters
to her that he discusses such subjects as Sabbatarianism
and the Old Catholic movement led by Dr Dollinger.
At this time she was engaged in the study of Greek,
and one letter from Heidelberg gave advice as to the
peculiarities of verbs in pi. But eighteen months later,
just when her nephew was about to graduate, she
evidently threatened to navigate seas where he could no
longer act as pilot and mentor, and he put in a note of
warning : " I am afraid, speaking from report, that
you will find Hebrew more difficult to tackle than
Greek. We have an old Hebrew lexicon which you once
bought. If you really begin, you shall get it on the
first opportunity."

Before we complete this brief account of Seth's
Lehrjahr in Edinburgh and pass on to his Wanderjahr
—his second and longer time of study in Germany-
it is needful to give some account of the trend of his
religious thought. It was impossible for any serious
student in Scotland during the seventies to disregard
the effect of new scientific or philosophic theories
upon the traditional religious beliefs of the society
around him. The bearing on these of the Darwinian
theory of evolution was being discussed on every hand.
The summer of 1876, which Seth spent peacefully in
Heidelberg, saw the Free Church of Scotland, to which
he belonged, stirred by the beginning of the fierce and
prolonged controversy aroused by the critical views of
William Robertson Smith, then a young professor of
Old Testament Language and Literature in the Church's
College in Aberdeen. These two new lines of dis
cussion — the evolutionary and the critical — were vigor
ously followed out by laymen as well as by experts, and

B

18 MEMOIR

brought to a sharp issue the relation of the new learning
to the old theology. Further, as we have already seen,
the view of the world to which Campbell Fraser pointed
the way had a theological as well as a strictly philoso
phical aspect ; and the study of the German idealists
brought Seth from another angle to see the importance
of the Philosophy of Religion as linking metaphysics
with theology. A survey written in July 1877, of his
intellectual development during the three previous
years, gives an intimate and moving view of the process
by which he passed from the orthodoxy of his earlier
upbringing to a religious outlook in harmony with the
new knowledge of the time.

He notes that the spring of 1874 was that of the visit
of Moody and Sankey, the American evangelists, to
Edinburgh ; and that their visit coincided with the time
when he was beginning to think on serious matters.
' They were not without some effect on me. I remember
being deeply moved by their parting address." The
following winter was that in which he entered Camp
bell Eraser's class ; and he records that keen com
petition between A. M. Stalker and himself was accom
panied by much friendly discussion of Berkeley, Hamilton
and other thinkers, when " everything was delightfully
fresh/' The winter saw an increasing intimacy between
Stalker, Seth and Capper ; and the last-named, now the
only survivor of the three friends, recalls in how pur
poseful a way Seth set himself to this task of revaluation
—as in later life to more practical tasks — without out
ward clatter or disturbance, or visible evidence of
Sturm und Drang, but with a quiet determination to go,
in Plato's phrase, wherever the argument might lead.

A year later the influence of George Eliot and Matthew
Arnold had become not less strong than that of Carlyle
and Wordsworth. " In Adam Bede George Eliot first
gained her prophetic hold over me. It was a time of

MEMOIR 19

opening up, aided by the influence of nature around me
and my studies in Wordsworth. The direction was
pantheistic, and was not checked by Robertson, who
supplied the moral element." l This refers to the
holiday in Arran already described, which was con
tinued with J. B. Capper and his parents at Ballach-
allan, a farm overlooking the Tay Valley some miles
above Dunkeld. " Capper and I used to stroll for a
quarter of an hour or so just before going to bed under
the deep blue and sparkling lights of a September night,
with the Tay gleaming in its shingly bed below : talk
runs deep at such seasons ... it turned a good deal on
' the All ' and Personal and Impersonal. ... I began
Romola, which moved me profoundly and left its
abiding mark on my life. I remember incidentally
that we used to frighten Mr and Mrs Capper rather by
our Berkeleianism and our firm conviction that it
must be either spirit or matter, not both. Carlyle's essay
on Novalis is also associated with these days." The
fragment ends with the following winter in Edinburgh,
when Seth had " devoured " Literature and Dogma
and God and the Bible; and he and Stalker counted
it a special privilege that they were enabled, through
the exertions of Mr Capper, to hear Matthew Arnold
lecture on Butler. He then adds an unconscious touch
of hero-worship : " We handled his MS. afterwards in
the reporter's hands."

Such were some of the influences that helped him on
the first stage of his pilgrimage towards the theism which
was his final creed. The next step appears in a remark
able passage of autobiography in Hegelianism and
Personality (2nd ed., p. 63 f.), which probably describes
the two years which followed his first visit to Germany.
After referring to Green's view of the " eternal Self "

1 F. W. Robertson of Brighton, whose Sermons and Life Seth was
also reading.

20 MEMOIR

as creating " the manifold individual selves " which we
know, he continues : —

" Probably no one who has really lived in this
phase of thought can fail to remember the thrill with
which the meaning of the new principle first flashed
upon him, and the light which it seemed to throw upon
old difficulties. It had become impossible, with due
regard to the unity of things, to conceive God as an
object, as something quite external to ourselves ; and,
on the other hand, there seemed nothing but a relapse
into ordinary Pantheism, with its submergence of self-
consciousness, and all that hangs thereby, in a general
life, which reason and conscience alike declare to be
inferior to our own. But, in this dilemma, the universal
consciousness seemed to rise upon us as a creative power
which was not without us, but within — which did not
create a world of objects and leave it in dead independ
ence, but perpetually unrolled, as it were, in each of
us the universal spectacle of the world. The world wras
thus perpetually created anew in each finite spirit,
revelation to intelligence being the only admissible
meaning of that much-abused term, creation. We had
here a new and better Berkeleianism, for God in this
system (so it seemed) was not an unknown Spirit,
hidden, as it were, behind the screen of phenomena ;
God was not far from any one of us, nay, He was within
us, He was in a sense our very Self."

21

CHAPTER II.

GERMANY.

1878-1880.

IN the spring of 1878 Andrew Seth completed his five
years' course at Edinburgh University, where his
brother James was already following in his steps. He
graduated with first class Honours both in Classics and
in Philosophy, then a rare, and in later days an almost
unknown, distinction at Edinburgh. The high promise
which he had already shown was brought to the notice
of Dr Martineau by Mr Jasper John Capper, the father
of his friend, who had some acquaintance with the
great Unitarian thinker ; and this helped to secure for
Seth a Hibbert travelling scholarship, after an inter
view in London in July. A similar scholarship was
granted at the same time to a Canadian student, who
had worked with him in the Honours classes during the
previous winter, and who became a lifelong friend —
Jacob Gould Schurman. Dr Schurman's later career
was both varied and distinguished. He became a
citizen of the United States and President of Cornell
University, and like many other American scholars,
achieved high distinction in the public service. He was
chosen as President of the Commission to the Philip
pine Islands in 1899, and afterwards filled various
diplomatic posts. After the war he was appointed

22 MEMOIR

American ambassador, first to China and then to
Germany.

During a holiday with his family at Pirnmill in Arran,
we find Seth deeply engaged in a fresh study of the
Critique of Pure Reason as a preparation for his sojourn
in Germany. In October the two Hibbert scholars
set out, Schurman going to Heidelberg to study under
Kuno Fischer, and Seth to Berlin, where his chief
teacher was Zeller, the well-known historian of Greek
philosophy. As regards his main object, a deeper
understanding of the great German idealists, he found
that the German universities had little help to give ;
for other forms of thought than the Hegelian were in
the ascendant, and Kant was studied chiefly for the
sake of his Theory of Knowledge, interpreted, in the
main, in an agnostic sense.1 This accounts for such
impatient obiter dicta in his letters as that the worst place
for the study of German idealism was Germany, and
that lectures were to be looked on as " one of the main
obstructives to study." " Study," in this sense, was
provided for immediately after his arrival, when he
spent £5, 2s. on complete editions of Kant and Hegel
—a sum equal to the whole cost of his outward journey.
Yet Zeller's learning and thoroughness impressed him,
and he found the lectures of Paulsen, a leader among
the younger thinkers, acute and stimulating, though
he describes him as prone to give the latest scientific
theory as a basis of philosophy— •" not the deeper
results of Kant and Hegel : for that a jest is enough."
It is of interest to note that Seth heard him lecture in
a semi-private conversational class on Hume's Dialogues
on Natural Religion, which he himself made the starting-
point a generation later of his most important book,
The Idea of God. At the end of the year he recorded

1 Cf. Lecture IV. in the present volume, " The Epistemology of
Neo- Kantianism . ' '

MEMOIR 23

his impression that the younger thinkers, in their
enthusiasm for the Darwinian conception of evolution,
and their materialistic bent tinged with the metaphysical
influence of Schopenhauer, had failed to gain that
" mental equanimity tempered by reverence " for which
he looked in the true philosopher.

The letter to A. M. Stalker in which certain of these
intellectual impressions are expressed touches lightly
on an experience which in the end influenced Seth
more profoundly and contributed more to his life's
happiness than all the lectures which he ever attended.
This was his introduction to German home life in the
family of Herr Albrecht Stropp, with whom he boarded.
In earlier days Herr Stropp had been a manorial pro
prietor (Rittergutsbesitzer) in Silesia, not far from Breslau ;
but his capital had been dissipated by two serious losses,
caused by the fault of one man and the misfortune of
another with whom he had business relations. He
then obtained a minor post in a Government office in
Berlin, and struck Seth as " very gentle and kindly,"
but " a little crushed by the world." Frau Stropp was
not less kindly, but of a more vigorous temperament,
and for years had worked hard and cheerfully to repair
the family fortunes. Their daughter Eva, who had
received a good education among the Moravians, was
interested in literature, French and English as well
as German. Her first contribution to the philosophical
studies of the young Scotsman was of a somewhat
quaint kind. She knew something of the household of
the celebrated von Hartmann, and evidently hinted
that his pessimism might be attributed in part to
domestic circumstances. Directed by Fraulein Stropp,
Seth walked out to the northern suburbs of Berlin,
and saw the great pessimist, much muffled in furs, study
ing in the winter sunshine on a veranda — a small man
with an impressive head.

24 MEMOIR

The friendship thus begun between Seth and Eva
Stropp ripened steadily into a deeper attachment ;
and at the end of the winter Seth wrote to Capper that
he had been reading the Midsummer Night's Dream
and Winter's Tale with her, and sent him some original
lines which let his friend see clearly the trend of his
feelings. Another letter told that he had " read some
of Shelley's splendid lyrics with purged eyesight." Next
winter he was invited to come from Leipzig and share the
Christmas festivities of the Stropp household as a welcome
guest. His letters home said little at that time — perhaps
significantly little — of the daughter of the house, but
four or five years later he had the happiness of returning
to claim her as his bride.

Neither this growing attachment nor his constant
application to the work which had brought him to
Germany prevented Seth from observing the political
life around him. The old Kaiser had not long before
escaped an attempted assassination, and great cele
brations were organised to mark his next entry into
Berlin. Seth was one of a large body of students who
marched six abreast in the procession ; but, while
ready to show respect to the Emperor personally, he
had little liking for the militarism which was even then
dominant. He was shocked by the violent ant i- Jewish
feeling of the day, and by the severe Bismarckian regime
which came near closing the university reading-room
because two or three journals of a moderate socialist
type were found there. The official attitude to Socialism
is described in a letter to Stalker, which brings in a
name, then scarcely known in Britain, but only too
well known a generation later :—

" Treitschke's standing motto against the possibility
of Socialism is, Keine Kultur ohne Dienstboten — i.e., we
must have a lower class to perform the menial services of
life. This is not very convincing, for there is no degrada-

MEMOIR 25

tion in the services themselves ; and, as someone
remarked to me : Why not reverse the motto and say,
Keine Dienstboten ohne Kultur ? "

At the end of this winter Seth expressed in a letter
to his father what he then felt about a lifetime devoted
to the study of philosophy : —

" The result of philosophy is to show us how much
we know, and how much it is absurd to expect we
should know. This merit of philosophy is especially
insisted on by Kant. For the rest, there is no need to
defend philosophy, as it has always existed and will
continue to exist so long as men continue to think. . . .
Nevertheless after a certain time one wishes to give up
' thinking about thinking/ to use a phrase of Carry le's,
and to grapple with more tangible material — in litera
ture, history, politics, &c. I would not care to go on
reading pure philosophy all my life or for very many
years."

After Easter 1879 Seth went on to Jena, attracted,
not by any special philosophical teaching — the day of
Eucken was not yet — but by the association with
Hegel, the opportunity which the quiet university town
of about 8000 inhabitants gave for hard reading, and
the neighbourhood of Weimar and the Thiiringerwald.
There he found John Haldane, a younger brother of
his friend, studying science, and a group of Scots theo
logical students which included John Herkless and Lewis
Muirhead.1 Living was cheap in Jena — £i a week
covered everything — and reserved seats in the little
theatre cost only 6d. Haldane found Seth naturally shy
and reserved, and only gradually came to know him
well ; but on May 7 he wrote to his brother Richard
that he liked Seth much, and had taken him to Haeckel's

1 I owe most of the facts in the two following paragraphs to Pro
fessor J. S. Haldane. The others named were afterwards known as
Principal Sir John Herkless of St Andrews University and Dr L. A.
Muirhead, author of The Eschatology oj Jesus.

26 MEMOIR

class. Haeckel began with " a sort of history of philo
sophy/' laying much stress on the early lonians, especi
ally those who could be classed as Monists ; and he
had much to say about Kant's nebular hypothesis,
but nothing about his philosophy. " He is a capital
lecturer," Haldane added, " and has wonderful eyes."
But the beaux yeux of Haeckel's then fashionable
materialistic Monism did not tempt Seth away from his
first love ; and his approach to philosophy remained to
the end what Carlyle and Wordsworth had made it-
ethical and humanist, rather than scientific.

These two friends soon formed with the Scottish
students of theology a circle which met for two hours a
week to read Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. It was from
this semester that Seth's profound knowledge of Hegel
began, though he confessed to Stalker that he found the
Logik " an utterly inhuman book." His letters home
told of a formidable working-day. The others frequently
tried to entice him out, and Muirhead's triumph was
great when he succeeded in bringing Seth down from the
Absolute, represented by Hegel, to " the concrete," in
the form of Lichtenhainer or some other light beer con
sumed in a country biergarten at the end of a walk
through the surrounding woods. On these long walks
many questions of theology as well as philosophy came
under review ; and the lectures which Seth most
appreciated during this summer were those of Hilgen-
feld, a New Testament scholar who sought to correct
the critical excesses of the " Tubingen School " a
generation before, and who gave him a new sense of the
vital relation between the life-history of St Paul and
his epistles.

The summer's work was broken by a visit to Weimar
to hear the Rheingold and Walkure, then seldom per
formed even in Germany, in the famous little theatre.
At Whitsuntide Stalker, who was studying medicine in

MEMOIR 27

Leipzig, came for a walking-tour through the Thuringer-
wald, in the course of which Ilmenau, the Wartburg and
other famous scenes were visited. A few lines may be
quoted from a blank-verse lyric which Seth afterwards
sent to his companion, which suggest that he had
fallen under the spell of Tennyson as well as that of
Wordsworth —

Day after day our steps lay through the pines,

Shut in a valley-land of old romance,

Where German love flowed o'er in German song

That lingers still, like bird-notes in the boughs.

And looking from some hillside on the woods,

As on a sea, we felt our life till now

A far-off background, like the circling plain

Seen through the distance in the sunny haze.

And like a dim noise heard through dreams by one

Who lays him in the grass beside a brook,

And, while he leans his head upon his arm,

Hears still the axe's stroke deep in the woods —

So dim to us the sounds of men below,

The clash of creeds, the traffic of the mart,

The sage still pressing on to grasp the world

And read the great God-mystery. So dim,

Or as the jangling of the cattle-bells,

Like faery music heard across the vale,

They lulled us in our dream.

After the close of the session at Jena Seth made his
way by Bayreuth and Nurnberg to Passau. From that
splendidly situated old town he went down the Danube
by river steamer, and from Vienna he turned westward
to the Salzkammergut, where he had his first experience
of walking in the Alps. In the course of one ascent he
was overtaken by a rainstorm, which reduced his
clothes and boots to a sodden and pulp-like condition.
It proved a matter of some difficulty to secure a carriage
to drive him into Salzburg, where his luggage with a
much-needed change of raiment awaited him ; and

28 MEMOIR

he wrote that in his soaked and collarless state he was
sure he had been taken for a tramp.

After a short visit to Scotland he returned for a
winter in Leipzig and a summer with Schurman in
Gottingen, which in some ways repeated the history
of his year in Berlin and Jena. A hard winter of the
Central European type gave notable opportunities of
skating. Music was a great and growing delight ; and
philosophy allowed him a margin of leisure to take
advantage of the musical gifts of the family with whom
he lodged, as well as of concert and opera. A Mozart
cycle and his first hearing of Siegfried especially delighted
him. Muirhead was with him at both universities,
and together they continued to read Hegel, and quoted
Faust in Auerbach's Keller. Eight volumes of Fichte
joined the Kant and Hegel on his bookshelf, and occu
pied much of his time through the early months of 1880.
At the same time he built up a library of German
literature, giving special attention to lyrical and ballad
poetry ; and as he was buying books for Schurman as
well, the bookseller treated him with marked respect.
When, as already mentioned, he revisited Berlin as the
guest of the Stropp family, he saw somewhat more of
Schurman, and wrote to Stalker regarding him : {< He
is a thoroughly good fellow, always fresh and enthusi
astic. I had the greatest interest in talking to him :
my heart warmed within me, even to the extent of wish
ing to write my Hibbert essay." Schurman took him
twice to Zeller's house, where he was impressed by the
gracious personalities of both Zeller and his wife — a
daughter of the leader of the Tubingen School, Ferdinand
Christian Baur. Of Zeller he wrote : —

"He is a simple, unassuming old man ; Schurman
says he is one of the few Germans who seem to have a
real interest in philosophical problems as living ques
tions. . . . Most, you know, look at them in a dead,

MEMOIR 29

' history of philosophy ' way. ... Zeller seems to be
very much at one with Strauss on most points — at least
in spirit. Strauss was little more than mentioned, but
one could trace the almost affectionate reverence with
which he looked to him as to a more brightly gifted
spirit. It was apropos of a letter he had written to
Strauss urging him to undertake a life of Lessing."

It was the fame of Hermann Lotze which chiefly
drew Seth, Muirhead and Schurman to Gottingen, and
Seth had heard much of it from R. B. Haldane, who had
studied there six years before. Schurman was already
an enthusiastic admirer, and infected his companions
with his own high hopes of what they might gain from
the one great German idealist of that epoch. But,
looking back after fifty years, Dr Schurman writes :
" Unfortunately the great man gave in the summer
semester of 1880 only elementary courses for beginners,
and he had no seminar. After a short time we dropped
out of the lectures, and concentrated on the writing of
our theses for the Hibbert Trustees. . . . We owed much
to Gottingen — but nothing to the professors." 1 This
estimate may be supplemented by sentences from two
letters to Stalker. On April 25, soon after reaching
Gottingen, Seth wrote : " We have heard two lectures
of Lotze's on Praktischen Philosophic. His face has the
quaint old-fashioned intelligence of a little shoemaker,
but is sweet in its expression. . . . The Metaphysik we
leave because it would break up the forenoon, and read
his book instead." Two months later he recorded a
visit to Lotze, who was busy revising his Logik.
" Mill he called a langweiliger Schwdtzer, and said one
could not afford to publish books like the Logic in
Germany." " I have read," the passage concludes,

1 Quoted by J. B. Capper in his Biographical Sketch of Pringle-
Pattison — Proc. of British Academy, Vol. xvii. But cf. Haldane's
notable tribute to Lotze, Selected Addresses and Essays, pp. 186-7.

30 MEMOIR

" more than half the Metaphysik, most of it with sober
profit/'

Seth's attitude to Fichte at this time was not dis
similar, for a certain impatience had followed the
enthusiasm of his first deep plunge into Fichte 's thought
the previous winter, and he found it " growingly unsatis
factory/' while it proved a toilsome matter to make an
abstract of the Wissenschaftslehre. Yet both Fichte and
Lotze left a deep imprint on his thinking, Fichte by the
intensely ethical character of his thought, and Lotze by
his " undaunted reassertion of the fundamental truth
of the view of the world implied in moral or spiritual
experience." The permanence of Lotze's influence in
particular is shown by the frequent references in Seth's
later writings ; and his deliberate judgment was that
Lotze had " exercised a more pervasive influence than
usually falls to the lot of any one who is not a thinker
of first-rate originality and genius." 1

Seth's attitude to Hegel at the end of his Lehrjahr
in Germany can also be gathered from the letter to
Stalker last quoted : " My essay is probably much more
Hegelian in tone than I am myself, but it will only
modestly insist towards the end that Hegel did not
know everything. . . . The prevailing sentiment of the
philosophical detachment of the Gottingen brigade is
that passage in Faust (alas, in Mephistopheles' mouth)—

' Grau, theuerer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und griin des Lebens goldener Baum.'

When shall we be able to pluck and eat of the fruit
of that tree ? "

Seth had an opportunity of relaxing from the intense
application of these two years during some pleasant

1 The Philosophical Radicals, and other Essays, p. 150 — from a
review of Jones' Philosophy of Lotze, originally published in 1895.

MEMOIR 31

weeks spent in Paris in the early autumn of this year.
He was joined by Capper, who had for some time been
on the staff of the Times, and in his welcome company
was able to compare the dramatic art of the Theatre
frangais with that of Leipzig and Berlin ; nor did his
love of things German blunt his sense of the charm of
France. But at this point we must follow out the history
of the Hibbert essay, which had gradually taken shape
at Gottingen.

Its title then was " The Permanent Results of the
Kantio-Hegelian Philosophy " ; but before its publica
tion early in 1882 the title was altered to " The Develop
ment from Kant to Hegel/' and at the special request
of the Trustees a second section was added on the Phil
osophy of Religion in the two great idealists. The book
has been long out of print ; but the chapters on the
Philosophy of Religion were reprinted by the author
twenty-five years later in The Philosophical Radicals.

The first impression that the book makes is that of a
clearness and maturity very notable in an author,
still under twenty-five, who is faced by a complex and
abstract subject. The gift of lucid exposition which
marked all his writings is already fully developed. The
chapter on Fichte, which cost him so much labour,
is the longest in the book, and is a model of clear state
ment and tempered appreciation and criticism. The
chapter on Schelling alone makes a somewhat strict
demand on the reader's attention, for even Seth's skill
as expositor was hardly equal to the task of making his
philosophy in its varied phases easily intelligible in
sixteen pages. But when he passes to Hegel he is on
ground which, difficult as it is, he has thoroughly
explored, and over which he moves with freedom.

The fact that Seth had already grasped clearly the
main principles of his future thinking and teaching
may be shown by two quotations, one from each section

32 MEMOIR

of the book. In his opening pages Seth deals with Kant's
doctrine of the thing-in-itself, and asks whether " the
Kantian demand to know noumena as something
behind, and different from, phenomena, is anything
more than the desire to know and not to know a thing
at the same time," and continues : " For, if we merely
exchange human thought for some other kind of thought,
we are no better off than before as regards a knowledge
of realities, seeing that the realities, in being known,
must be equally coloured by the nature of this new
thought." This argument that, while we try to criticise
and systematise our knowledge, we must accept know
ledge so criticised as a true avenue to the reality of
things, and not as a misleading screen separating us
for ever from them, runs through all Seth's writing on
epistemology ; and not less characteristic in another
sphere is his account of the relation between the ethical
and the religious consciousness. Without religious
experience, he contends, man "is an atom struggling
in vain with the evil of his own nature, and possibly, too,
with the misery of surrounding circumstances. If he
is to be successful in the struggle, he must be persuaded
that he is not alone, or, in the language of religion, that
God is for him, and that nothing, therefore, can be
ultimately against him. The triumph that he only
anticipates in himself and others he must conceive as
secure of fulfilment — in fact, as already fulfilled in the
eternal purpose of God." l

1 The Philosophical Radicals, p. 270.

33

CHAPTER III.

EDINBURGH AND CARDIFF.

1880-1887.

IT was natural that Seth's brilliant record up to this
point should gain him a post as a teacher of philosophy,
and several months before he returned from Germany
he was asked by Professor Campbell Fraser to succeed
his friend, W. R. Sorley, in the position of class assistant
in Logic and Metaphysics. He readily accepted, and his
work in this capacity began in the late autumn of 1880.
A distinction which fell to him at this time was the
Ferguson Philosophical Scholarship. It was much
prized, as being open to graduates with Honours in
Philosophy of the four Scottish universities. In holding
it he was preceded by R. B. Haldane, and in 1882 his
brother James gained the same honour. In this con
nection Lord Haldane tells in his Autobiography an
incident which illustrates Andrew Seth's scrupulous
loyalty to his friends. Haldane had decided to take
the Degree of Doctor of Science in Philosophy, the only
higher degree then open in Edinburgh to students with
philosophical honours. He submitted for the purpose
a thesis on Immortality, which was turned down by the
examiners — on the instance, strangely, of a professor
of Science with strictly orthodox religious views — not
because it was philosophically incompetent, but because

c

34 MEMOIR

it was theologically heterodox. Seth, he adds, was
so moved by his friend's experience that he refused
to send in a thesis of his own for this degree.

In a letter to Stalker, Seth speaks of an esssay on
Immortality by Haldane — presumably embodying the
chief part of the rejected thesis — as " indirect in treat
ment/' but " a very closely and strongly reasoned
essay." A passage in another letter to the same friend
towards the end of 1882 indicates his attitude to a
question constantly discussed in the seventies. Referring
to Seeley's Ecce Homo he says : " Being fresh from
Matthew Arnold I struck at the acceptance of miracles
in the earlier part of the book. Now one can approach
all these things in a more objective and historic
interest. "

Seth's work as assistant to Professor Fraser was
largely tutorial, and involved much correcting of
examination papers. It was congenial, in that it brought
him into close touch with his old teacher, and placed
him in a line of men who were rapidly gaining positions
of influence in the philosophical world. But it gave
little opportunity for independent lecturing, and the
salary was only £40. So he turned to journalism to
supplement it. J. B. Capper gave him an introduction
to Charles Cooper, an able and forceful Yorkshireman,
then editor of the Scotsman. From reviewing volumes
of poetry and philosophy, Cooper soon promoted Seth
to the writing of leading articles, and for nearly two
years he contributed largely along both lines. Nor were
either reviews or leaders of a flimsy nature. A column
and a quarter (about 1200 words) was the standard
length ; for the newspaper reader of that period had
greater determination and fewer distractions than his
easily wearied successor of to-day.

Cooper expressed privately his warm admiration for
Seth's journalistic gifts ; and during one vacation

MEMOIR 35

month — July 1882, the month of the bombardment of
Alexandria — when he was almost unassisted in his
editorial work, he asked Seth to come down night after
night to work at the office. The harvest of that month's
work included twenty-one leaders of the length named.
Regarding German politics he was naturally well
informed, and the following is worth quoting as an
example of his foresight. Bismarck, he writes in May
1881, " has created a position so unique that it is next
to impossible to imagine Germany without him. His
retirement or death, when it occurs, will inevitably
throw more power into the hands of the Parliamentary
parties ; but they have been tutored into submission
so long that, when the strong hand is removed, they
may be expected to stagger considerably before righting
themselves."

In addition to foreign politics the young leader-
writer was turned loose on the field of Scots ecclesi-
asticism, and took full advantage of the then attitude
of the Scotsman to pillory the " unco guid," the ultra-
orthodox and the extreme wing of Sabbatarians. A
leader which combines sarcasm with psychological
insight is on the Meeting of Extremes, in which he
compares the characteristics of the farthest right wing
of the Scottish Kirk with those of the Communist left
in French politics, and tells a pleasant story of two
French Communists who, wishing to mark their son
as a true revolutionist, decided to call him Lucifer
Blanqui Vercingetorix, and were virtuously indignant
when the maire of their commune refused to register a
child so amazingly named. Another leader, with the
titles " Cardinals Begg and Manning," points out how
much there was in common between the ultramontanism
of Dr Begg, a once famous Edinburgh minister of extreme
orthodoxy, and that of Cardinal Manning, who had
claimed in a sermon delivered in Glasgow that Scotland

36 MEMOIR

traditionally possessed not a few characteristic notes of
Catholic truth.

In a graver mode are two other contributions to the
Scotsman — the first a leader on the death of Carlyle,
published in February 1881 ; the other, a long and
elaborate critique of Parsifal, written after a visit to
Bayreuth eighteen months later. Only a few sentences
can be quoted from the conclusion of each.

" Carlyle was often unjust to the spirit of constitu
tionalism and of science, and he made light of their
triumphs. But his impassioned denunciations were
able to do no harm to what is good in these two great
tendencies of modern life, while they had their use in
impressing on men the essential importance of personal
worth and effort as the sole source of moral health. . . .
Many will remember at this time the noble words he
spoke on the death of his own great master, Goethe,
and will feel that here again they stand at the end of
' the being and the working of a faithful man/ Like
Goethe, he had touched the extreme limit of human
life, and in his case, too, the end came gently. His
work remains, and the lessons he has taught us, even
when the voice that uttered them is dumb/'

Of Parsifal Seth wrote : " Wagner has certainly
aimed very high. Whether he has produced a work
which is an artistic whole, I can hardly say. ... A
dramatic character must certainly be denied to the
work. The action that takes place is purely symbolical,
and the interest of the hearer is concentrated on what
may be called the decorative parts of the music — on
the double celebration of the sacrament, the march of
Gurnemann and Parsifal to the temple in the first act,
and the sanctified glory of the spring in the third. In
the whole of the last act, indeed, there is nothing which
we would willingly part with in the music. But this
bears out the criticism just made, for the act is simply

MEMOIR 37

a succession of religious offices." After drawing a parallel
with the Second Part of Faust, the writer concluded :
" Wagner's musical genius has saved him to a great
extent in spite of himself ; but in adventuring upon the
arid ground of a carefully calculated symbolism, he has
certainly entered a territory dangerous to art."

These extracts show something of the range of Seth's
interests at this time ; yet he found time for other
varied activities in the summer and autumn of 1882.
For three weeks he took the senior Greek classes in the
Royal High School while the rector was absent, and
reported that he had " kept order and learned a great
deal of Greek," but that, though he felt he had got on
well with the boys, he was not drawn to the career of
a schoolmaster. After returning from Bayreuth by
Treves and Paris, he joined the Campbell Frasers at
Grasmere. He found there J. W. Mackail, a friend and
class-fellow of five years before, and with his hosts met
Matthew Arnold at Fox How.

About the same time reviews of From Kant to Hegel
began to arrive from both sides of the Atlantic, and to
his great amusement a professor from Providence, N.J.,
making a round of celebrities in the British universities,
appeared on the author's doorstep. In autumn he
summoned up courage to advertise a series of lectures
for the ladies of Edinburgh on English poetry, and wrote
to Stalker of the embarrassment which he felt when a
large number of their mutual friends enrolled for the
class : " Think also of lecturing on Don Juan next
Monday in these circumstances. Your prayers, lieber
Freund, your prayers ! "

A venture of greater importance undertaken at the
same time was a volume of Philosophical Essays. To
understand its origin we must go back to the previous
year, 1881, when a group of young Hegelians, including
Adamson, Seth and R. B. Haldane, felt that some

38 MEMOIR

step must be taken to show their profound dissatisfaction
with the conduct of Mind, under the editorship of Pro
fessor Groom Robertson. Its general attitude was that
of the empiricism so long dominant in England ; nor
was this unnatural, as it had been founded, and was
largely financed and its policy controlled, by Alexander
Bain, who since the death of John Stuart Mill had been
the recognised leader of Associationist thought. In
their desire for a fuller opportunity than was granted
in its pages for the exposition of their own philosophical
faith, the younger idealists had the moral support of
T. H. Green, Edward Caird and Wallace ; and it would
appear that Sidgwick and Campbell Eraser gave them a
more guarded encouragement. For a time the two
youngest of the group, Seth and Haldane, thought of
starting a new philosophical journal ; but by the spring
of the following year they had exchanged this plan for
that of a volume which might serve in some manner as
a manifesto of the younger idealists. This more modest
scheme proved acceptable to those who controlled the
policy of Mind, and Croom Robertson, who had been
vigorously assailed by Seth in his letters to Haldane a
few months before, promised to do what he could to
further it.

At this point, on March 26, 1882, Thomas Hill Green
died in his forty-sixth year ; and this event formed one
of the foci round which the thought of the essayists
finally found its orbit, as the centenary of the publica
tion of the Critique of Pure Reason formed the other.
In reprinting twenty-five years later his own essay on
" Philosophy as Criticism of Categories," with which
the volume opened, Seth wrote as follows : "It was the
first paper in a volume of Essays in Philosophical Criti
cism, published in 1883, m somewhat belated con
nection with the centenary of the Critique of Pure
Reason. The volume was dedicated to the memory of

MEMOIR 39

Thomas Hill Green, who died in the previous year, and
some prefatory pages by Dr Edward Caird contained a
fine tribute to the spirit of Green's life and teaching. . . .
The second essay, on ' The Relation of Philosophy to
Science/ was the work of the present Secretary of State
for War, in collaboration with his brother, Dr J. S.
Haldane. The other contributors were (to give them
their later titles) Professor Bernard Bosanquet, Pro
fessor W. R. Sorley, Professor W. P. Ker, Professor
Henry Jones, Dr James Bonar, Professor T. B. Kil-
patrick of Knox College, Toronto, and the late Professor
D. G. Ritchie of St Andrews. This, it will be admitted,
was a band of which the editors had no reason to be
ashamed. The ideas of the book were then compara
tively unfamiliar, and the writing of the youthful
authors was often, perhaps, unnecessarily difficult, but
the critics were at least unanimous in recognising the
sincerity and scientific purpose which animated the
volume/' l

The estimate in the last sentence quoted describes
with accuracy Seth's introductory essay. The idea of
Philosophy as making clear the order and relation of
the various forms of knowledge by criticising the cate
gories which they habitually use has often been worked
out since ; but it had then the merit of freshness, though
his statement of it showed, as he himself hints, less than
the usual lucidity of his philosophical writing. In the
Preface to the volume, Dr Edward Caird stated that
the essays were written quite independently, and that
the unity which ran through the volume was due to
" a certain community of opinion in relation to the
general principle and method of philosophy/' The
double origin of the book naturally influenced its char
acter. Its connection with the centenary of the Critique
showed itself in the attention paid to the Kantian
1 Preface to The Philosophical Radicals.

40 MEMOIR

theory of Knowledge, a field in which Seth had already
shown himself an expert. But more important was its
character as a tribute to the memory of T. H. Green.
The pervasiveness and depth of his influence stand out
clearly when we recall that his two most important
works, the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Principles of
Political Obligation, were only published from his
lecture notes after the essays were written, and that
only four of the ten essayists had come under his per
sonal influence at Oxford. Yet the spirit of Green's
idealism runs through the volume ; and its editors
might well feel that, in bringing their notable band of
contributors together within six months of his death,
they had raised a fitting monument to one of the greatest
teachers of ethics — of moral philosophy in the fullest
sense — that England has ever known.

One incidental advantage to Seth was that part of
the editorial work was done during a visit to the Hal-
danes' home at Cloan ; and this beautiful spot on the
slope of the Ochils, looking across Strathearn north and
west to the higher hills of the Grampian range, became
a frequent scene of holiday visits in later years. Another
friendship which proved a decisive factor in his life
began at this time. He had been impressed by reading
Mr A. J. Balfour 's Defence of Philosophic Doubt, pub
lished originally in 1879, and wrote to the young phil
osopher-statesman inviting him to give an address to
the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society, of
which we have already heard. Mr Balfour agreed to
come, and a lasting friendship between the two thinkers
was established, one early fruit of which was the founda
tion of the Balfour Philosophical Lectureship which
will be described in the next chapter.

By the year 1883, Seth was anxious to secure an
independent position. Young as he was, his name had
already become widely known ; and for a time he

MEMOIR 41

thought of accepting a chair in California. But an
opening occurred nearer home through the foundation
of a philosophical chair in Cardiff. The steps by which
Seth came to hold it may be told in the words of one
who became a lifelong friend, Miss Price, afterwards
Mrs Harding : " My father was one of the Gover
nors of the newly founded University of South Wales
and Monmouthshire in which we were all keenly inter
ested ; and he came home from the meeting at which
Viriamu Jones had been appointed Principal full of
admiration for the Scotch philosopher who had also
put in for the post/' But the chair of Philosophy to
which Seth was appointed was much better adapted to
his bent than the administrative work of the principal-
ship would have been. Mrs Harding goes on to describe
the excitement in the quiet town of Cardiff when all
the new life poured into it. Mr Price was a great reader
of philosophy, and as in those days hardly anyone in
Cardiff shared his enthusiasm, he took the earliest
opportunity to make Seth's acquaintance, and enrolled
as a student of the new college in order to attend Seth's
lectures, which he much valued and enjoyed. He often
spoke of the perfection of his language, and said that
if the professor paused it was never for lack of a word,
but because he was choosing between several the one
which would most accurately express his meaning.

Among his colleagues was one who was already a
friend — W. P. Ker, in later years Professor of English
Literature in University College, London. Ker was a
brilliant and many-sided man, who had gone from
Glasgow University to Balliol as Snell Exhibitioner,
and who, before he made English Literature the
subject of his life work, was assistant to Professor
Sellar in the Latin chair in Edinburgh. His years at
Balliol under Green and A. C. Bradley had given him a
deep interest in the Philosophy of Art — the subject of

42 MEMOIR

his contribution to Essays in Philosophical Criticism.
Thus Seth and Ker had many links, in their friendship
for the Sellar family, in their idealist creed, and in their
common enthusiasm for literature, classical and modern,
but especially for the great English poets. The friend
ship cemented in the four years of close co-operation at
Cardiff lasted unbroken till W. P. Ker's death in 1923.
It has been said of him that " the Cardiff years, strenuous
as they were, lived on in his memory as a cheerful,
not to say ' jolly ' affair of pioneers." " There is some
thing good in education/' he said in retrospect, " when
it beats up a crew of adventurers and puts them in a
stockade to hold against the enemy." l

Other friendships formed in Cardiff were with Pro
fessor Claude Thompson, an excellent field naturalist,
whose long tramps with Ker were sometimes shared by
Seth, and Mr W. P. James, afterwards High Bailiff of
Cardiff, who combined with legal knowledge a keen
and alert interest in philosophy. As was natural when
a university college had been newly started in an area
mainly industrial, there was only a restricted number of
students who could fully respond to such teaching as
that of Seth and Ker ; so the former founded a senior
class of men who had passed beyond the undergraduate
stage. Within this there was an inner circle formed for
the study of Hegel, consisting of Seth, Ker, James and
Roberts, then Professor of Greek at Cardiff and after
wards Principal at Aberystwyth. They never went
beyond the Preface to the Phenomenology ; but of that
they made a translation, which remained to show the
spirit of thoroughness in which they approached that
formidable work. Less exacting were the meetings of
a literary society called ' The Fortnightly ' ; and there

1 I am allowed by Mrs John MacCunn to quote, here and later,
from a privately printed memorial volume, written by her husband
and herself, entitled Our Friend, W. P.

MEMOIR 43

were also reading parties in which Seth acted as one
of the guides into the arcana of Browning, and shared
with his friends his own enthusiasm for Heine.

Cardiff was within easy reach of much beautiful
country even before the coming of the motor ; and
Seth often walked with members of the Price family
and other friends over the heights from which the hills
of Somerset and Devon could be seen across the Bristol
Channel. On clear days the Brecon Beacons could be
seen towering to the north ; and the younger members
of the party looked on with eagerness and amusement
when W. P. Ker took off his hat to the mountains of
Wales. Seth's beard already gave him a somewhat
venerable appearance as a teacher, but Mrs Harding
recalls him on these hill walks as " tall, lithe, active,
full of talk and fun."

To this busy, friendly life he brought his bride in the
autumn of 1884, and she was warmly welcomed by the
whole circle. Andrew Seth and Eva Stropp were
married in Berlin in July, and James Seth went from
Jena, where he was studying, to support his brother
on this occasion. The weeks immediately following the
wedding were spent in Eva's home country of Silesia.
In the Riesengebirge she was introduced to the pleasures
of hill-climbing, then an unfamiliar occupation for
German girls ; and from Warmbrunn they went on to
Gnadenfrei, where she had been at school among the
Moravians. " We wanted to visit it together," her
husband writes to his mother. " It lies pleasantly and
is very quiet. We went to church this morning to the
Herrnhuter service. The large hall so well filled was
an interesting and impressive sight : all very simple.
The only drawback we found was that we had to go in
at different doors and sit in different parts of the church "
— truly a hard fate on the second Sunday of their
wedded life.

44 MEMOIR

So began forty-four years of unity in heart and pur
pose, and so was laid the foundation of that home life
whose development we shall trace in later pages. But
if this year brought happiness almost unmingled, that
which followed brought bereavement. In 1885 Vera
Margaret, the eldest child of Andrew and Eva Seth,
was born and died at Cardiff. When the child's illness
had become serious, the father wrote to a friend that
he was " weary with watching and anxiety," and felt
unable to meet his class. A few days before Christmas
the end had come, and the lives of the parents were
deeply marked by this early sorrow. In the same year
the death of Seth's father at the age of fifty-nine broke
up the home in Edinburgh ; and in 1887, after James
Seth had been appointed to a philosophical chair at
Halifax, Nova Scotia, his mother and her younger
children followed him to make their home for a time
beyond the Atlantic. Andrew Seth wrote that this
parting from his mother seemed " almost like a fore
taste of the final separation " ; but happily, as a later
chapter will show, the parting was only for a time.

Before the Seths left Cardiff another German bride
joined the circle of friends associated with University
College. Professor W. N. Parker, one of the scientists
on the staff, married a daughter of the famous biologist,
August Weismann, and Mrs Parker naturally received
a warm welcome from her fellow-countrywoman and
her Scottish husband.

During the series of political crises in the years 1885
and 1886, Seth had little difficulty in determining his
course. His recent connection with the Scotsman, which
now took a strong line against Home Rule, and his
growing friendship with Mr Balfour, may have assisted
him to do so. But his admiration for Mr Gladstone had
always been of a qualified kind, and he now wrote that
his feelings about him were " quite unphilosophical."

MEMOIR 45

Yet his enthusiasm for the Unionist cause was not
sufficient to take him to a meeting addressed by Mr
Balfour, who was still introduced in the provinces as
" a nephew of Lord Salisbury/' Seth was content to
wait at home till the speaker's effort was over and
he had been driven round a great part of Cardiff by
an inefficient cabman who had no idea of the young
professor's whereabouts. There followed, however, a
talk on philosophy, prolonged far into the night.

While at Cardiff Seth contributed a philosophical
survey twice a year to the Contemporary Review, and
also wrote several articles for the Ninth Edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. One of these is mentioned
in a letter dated November 30, 1886, to Dr S. S. Laurie,
the first Professor of Education in the University of
Edinburgh, to whose friendship Seth often acknow
ledged his debt, as well as to Laurie's Metaphysica and
other philosophical writings :—

" I delayed acknowledging your Lectures on Univer
sities till I could send you more than merely a message
of thanks. ... I must congratulate you on the pro
duction of a most interesting and useful book. I was
specially interested in all you say about mediaeval
education, because I had some imperfect glimpses at
the subject by the way in reading for my article
' Scholasticism ' in the Britannica. I should have been
quite glad to have had it then. ... I venture to
think it is well-timed with reference to the movement
of University Reform in Scotland and possible legisla
tion in the near future. Nothing could be better at such
a time than to spread some knowledge of the actual
history of such institutions.

" In reference to what you say — ' We may yet see
restored both in England and Scotland the hostels of
the Middle Ages ' — it may be of interest to you to know
that the question of establishing a hostel for men has

46 MEMOIR

been repeatedly under discussion here, the very name
being used. We have one for women, called Aberdare
Hall. It is probable that in course of time, if a general
hostel is not established, the religious bodies may
combine to have a hostel (or may separately estab
lish hostels) for theological students coming to us for
their Arts course. At Bangor, I believe, the Church
has already established such a hostel. They don't
quite trust the unlimited freedom of the Scotch system
here."

From Cardiff, Seth's eyes were often turned north
ward ; and though the part of his life spent outside
Scotland was relatively small, his two years in Germany
and four years in South Wales prepared him in many
ways for his notable career as a teacher of Philosophy
in the universities of his own land.

47

CHAPTER IV.

THE BALFOUR LECTURES.

1884-1891.

DURING Seth's residence in Cardiff he began to be
known beyond the circle of specialists in philosophy to
whom his first writings were addressed. This wider
reputation came with the publication of Scottish Philo
sophy in 1885, followed by Hegelianism and Personality
two years later. The latter was not, indeed, published
until shortly after his appointment to St Andrews
University in the autumn of 1887, but the lectures
which it contained were given before he left Cardiff.
Both series were delivered in Edinburgh University
under the Balfour Philosophical Lectureship. We have
seen how Mr Balfour was invited to deliver to the
University Philosophical Society a paper, to which he
referred long after as his first public lecture on a philo
sophical subject. In his Chapters of Autobiography
(Ch. V.) he describes the sequel : " Out of this Edinburgh
episode there sprung not merely the personal friendship
to which I have referred, but also an arrangement under
which Professor Pringle-Pattison delivered two sets of
' Balfour ' Lectures, one devoted to Hegel, the other to
the philosophers of the Scottish School. Since then he
has made contributions to our philosophic literature,
original in matter and admirable in style. But surely

48 MEMOIR

the full promise of this later harvest was already given
in the two modest volumes with which he began the
series/'

The Balfour Lectureship was unusual in that it was
only held — and was only intended to be held — by one
man. Mr Balfour may have wished to help forward
a scheme then under discussion for the delivery of
short courses of special lectures within the University
by instituting one such course ; x but his main object
undoubtedly was to draw out, or at least to hasten,
the original contribution which he felt Seth had the
power to make to philosophical thought. So Seth
twice returned from Cardiff to deliver these courses in
his old University. The first was inscribed " gratefully
and affectionately " to Professor Campbell Fraser, who
took an active interest in the progress of Mr Balfour's
generous scheme.

In the opening paragraphs of Scottish Philosophy Seth
indicates that his choice of subject has been in part
influenced by patriotism, but his main reason is that
" though the Idealists are constantly discharging their
heavy artillery against the Empiricists and Agnostics,
the matter does not seem, somehow, to be brought to a
vital issue ; the cannonade appears to pass harmlessly
over the enemy's head." This difficulty he traces in
part to the unfamiliar and highly German form given
by the Idealists to their argument — which suggests that
two years' teaching in Cardiff had increased his sense
of the value of lucidity — and he expresses the hope
that " some progress may be made towards bringing
the opposing armies within fighting range of one another,
if we turn our attention nearer home."

With this in view he proceeds to survey the dis
integration of knowledge in the development from
Locke to Hume, and ends with the epigram : " Scepti-

1 Scottish Philosophy, Preface.

MEMOIR 49

cism is the bridge by which we pass from one system,
or family of systems, found wanting, to another age
with its fuller grasp of truth/' This bridge — or at least
some arches of it — he finds in the neglected writings of
Thomas Reid ; and in the central part of the book he
sets himself to " interpret the much-abused Reid accord
ing to his better self." While making no claim that
Reid's writings are comparable in depth or originality
to those of Kant, he contends that Reid grasped the
essential point of any effective answer to Hume, and
that his " vindication of perception as perception " and
his " assertion that the unit of knowledge is an act of
judgment " supply important parts of the required
answer.

The later lectures show how the relativism which
still remained in Kant's Theory of Knowledge reap
peared in Sir William Hamilton, against whom Seth
argues that " in knowing the phenomenon, we know
the object itself through and through — so far, of course,
as we do know it, so far as it really has become a
phenomenon for us." In the closing paragraphs of the
book he adumbrates a position which, he claims, is in
line with the best traditions in Scottish thought as
" reversing the deductive method of Fichte and Hegel."
" The ultimate unity of things is what we stretch for
ward to, what we divine, but what we never fully attain.
It is our terminus ad quern ; it is never so fully within our
grasp that we can make it in turn our terminus a quo,
and, placing ourselves, as it were, at the crisis of creation,
proceed to deduce step by step the characteristics of
actual existence in nature and in man." l This last
thought was one to which Seth often recurred.2

The lectures were well received, and no tribute can

1 4th ed., pp. 96, 176, 220.

2 Cf. Man's Place in the Cosmos, pp. 191, 227, 242 f. ; The Idea of
God, p. 165 f.

D

50 MEMOIR

have given their author more satisfaction than that
paid by the founder of the lectureship, whose appre
ciation was expressed in a letter as long and exhaustive
as a review article. Seth had the pleasure laudari a
laudato when he read Mr Balfour's judgment on the
style : "It seems to me as nearly perfect as a philoso
phical style can be — concise ; agreeable ; extraordinarily
lucid ; never unnecessarily technical, yet never sacri
ficing the substance to the phrase ; with none of the
sonorous prolixity which has too often been the char
acteristic of Lectures on Philosophy, and especially (I
am afraid) of Scotch Lectures on Philosophy." The
matter of the lectures received the same generous recog
nition ; and the writer went on to point out various
difficulties not yet made clear — such as the bearing of
Seth's view of knowledge on the Law of Causation and
on the knowledge of other selves — as topics which might
well be developed in a further course.

There is one criticism of Scottish Philosophy lying, as
it were, on the surface which demands a word of com
ment. It may be asked whether it is not a paradox
to treat Hume and Hamilton as being outside the main
current of the Scottish philosophical tradition, and
whether the stream does not reduce itself to a mere
trickle when it is identified with the thought of Reid
and Dugald Stewart. In reply it may be pointed out
that in the nineteenth century, especially on the Conti
nent, the ' common-sense ' school founded by Reid
was regularly referred to by historians of philosophy
as the distinctively Scottish one, and that it had con
siderable influence on Cousin and others in France.
But it is more important to note that in Seth's own
view it had not ended with the early nineteenth century,
but that, especially in the teaching of Campbell Fraser,
there was found an idealism which was not for an
intellectual elite only — an idealism which preserved the

MEMOIR 51

rights of the common man by interpreting his ethical
and religious experience, as well as by vindicating the
fundamental trustworthiness of his knowledge of the
external world. In this movement Seth now definitely
took his place.

His early works were all largely occupied in treating
the Kantian theory of knowledge ; and a letter to Mr
W. P. James in March 1886 shows the spirit, at once
sane and humorous, in which he regarded the task of
interpretation :—

" Certainly the phenomenalism and dualism are not
the valuable part of Kant ; they have to be dropped,
if we are going to get any further. But they are so
patently there in the historical individual called Kant
that one wearies eventually of persistent attempts to
minimise them. It is of no use to say ' This is Kant/
when somebody else constructs you quite another Kant
and refuses to accept yours. The feeling then comes
to be — show him for once as he is with all his imper
fections on his head and then off to the lumber-room
with him. Let us shape our philosophy as we please,
but what is gained by calling it Kantianism ? Nothing,
so far as I can see, but endless historical disputation.
To prove to you, however, that I am rigidly just to
the two methods of treating Kant, it is enough to
remark that I have myself used both — the developmental
in an essay in Essays in Philosophical Criticism and the
bare historical in my Lectures on Scottish Philosophy.
In this way I have it in my power to refer my critics
from Philip drunk to Philip sober, leaving them to
take their choice as to which is which/'

As has already been stated, the Second Series of Balfour
Lectures followed the first at an interval of two years,
but there is a wide space between the two little books,
both in respect of their method and of the impression
which they made. , For Hegelianism and Personality

52 MEMOIR

had a polemical character not previously seen in Seth's
writings.1 The opening lectures, it is true, on ' Kant
and Neo-Kantianism ' and ' Fichte ' showed the same
traits — clearness of exposition and criticism as a pro
paedeutic to ultimate construction — as his earlier essays
in the same field. But when he went on to deal with
Hegel and his successors, he showed that he could
wield a keener blade than he had previously used ; and
to the surprise of many readers its edge was directed
chiefly against aspects of that Hegelian or neo-Hegelian
thought of which he had previously appeared as an
exponent. It is true that he had never shown an un
critical or unqualified acceptance of Hegel's system as
a system. In the closing words of From Kant to Hegel
he had expressed his conviction that the strength of
Hegelianism lay most of all in its philosophy of history.
Hegel, he used to tell his students, possessed " probably
the richest mind that had been devoted to philosophy
since Aristotle " ; 2 and his appreciation of the light
thrown by Hegel on many aspects of knowledge, history
and art never varied. But this little book represented a
change of emphasis of a quite decided kind. The in
fluence of Mr Balfour's criticisms of contemporary
transcendentalism was seen in this new attitude, though
the main factor in causing it was Seth's own growing
sense that certain tendencies in Hegel and post-Hegelian
idealism imperilled those ethical and religious positions
to which he always firmly adhered. Thus the spear
head of his argument was directed against such elements
in Hegelianism as the attempt to deduce Reality from
Pure Thought, the disparagement of the Time-process
and of the struggle and progress of moral personalities
within that process, the deification of the philosopher,

1 The title orginally in view was " Hegelianism and Human Person
ality " ; but, partly in deference to Campbell Fraser's opinion, it was
shortened by the omission of the adjective.

2 Cf. Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 94.

MEMOIR 53

which carries with it the idea of God as deprived of self-
existence and having " His only reality in the con
sciousness of the worshipping community." l

Against any such tendency to undervalue the ex
perience of human striving personalities when it tes
tifies to contact with a reality not fully defined by the
processes of abstract thought, Seth launched not only
argument but a succession of epigrams, such as : "A
living dog is better than a dead lion, and even an atom
is more than a category." " Both philosophy and
religion bear ample testimony to the almost insuper
able difficulty of finding room in the universe for God
and man." " Each Self is an unique existence, which
is perfectly impervious, if I may so speak, to other selves
—impervious in a fashion of which the impenetrability
of matter is a faint analogue." 2 These were among
the most often quoted of his utterances ; and the last
phrase in particular aroused much pointed criticism, so
that in his Gifford Lectures he felt impelled to qualify
it carefully.3 Indeed, the interval of twenty-five years
between the Balfour and Gifford Lectures brought about
a change of outlook both in physics and psychology
which to a great extent robbed the analogy of its
appositeness. But to the underlying idea of the moral
Self as autonomous Seth always adhered.

A letter to Mr W. P. James in December 1887 throws
additional light upon Seth's meaning : —

" My contention is that our knowledge of a thing,
even if supposed adequate, is one thing and the existence
of the thing itself is another. I do not mean to fall
back into relativity : let our knowledge be as true as
it likes, as correct a rendering of the essence of the
thing, still it is a rendering of the thing, not the thing

1 Hegelianism and Personality, 2nd ed., p. 197.

2 Op. cit., pp. 131, 162, 227.
9 The Idea of God, p. 389 f.

54 MEMOIR

itself. I think this is pretty clear when we produce our
own thought to infinity (as it were). Must it not also
be true of the divine thought qua thought — at least in
regard to anything that can be said in any sense to exist
on its own account ?

" But you are quite at one with me when you say
that ' the substance of a stone, even when transparently
rational, is ultimately impervious ' ; and I in turn am
quite at one with you when you try to imagine that
' our personalities might be in a still higher sense im
pervious though contained in the higher spirit/ I
think I have expressed myself in very similar words
somewhere in the book.

" Several passages may seem to assert absolutely
independent individuals. That would be a philosophical
absurdity quite contrary to my intention, but in com
bating an opinion one always tends to overstate the
opposite view. I was aiming at some such higher spirit,
but asserting within it a relative independence of lower
spirits. Representing it metaphorically, we should be
so many centres of personality contained within a
being who would have his own great centre, distinct
from the minor ones. Ordinary Hegelians seem to me
to make one centre do duty for all, thus denying the
separateness or imperviousness of the different selves.
It is here, as I think, that the confusion of an epistemo-
logical with a metaphysical result comes in harmfully.

" At the same time I fully admit that the problem
of this relative independence remains as dark as ever,
and is not even touched in my book. Theosophy is a
dreadful bog to get into. The British public won't
stand it. Better write a treatise on golf than a third
course on such a subject."

But before we pass on to the third course, we may
note that the second found some of its most severe
critics among those who had joined with Seth in writing

MEMOIR 55

Essays in Philosophical Criticism only four years earlier.
They felt, not unnaturally, that one of their leaders had,
in Plato's phrase, " laid hands on his father, Par-
menides," and that their own competence as philoso
phical thinkers had been somewhat sharply called in
question. Into the controversy which followed there is
no need to enter now. Seth said, in his Preface to the
second edition of the book five years later : " The
criticism it has encountered must be regarded as a
wholesome stirring of the philosophic waters " ; and
later chapters will show that, whatever temporary
coolness — or heat — may have followed its publication,
several of Seth's former collaborators, not least the
Haldanes, remained close friends long years after.
Indeed, as early as November 1888, Richard Haldane
wrote that, in view of a further statement by Seth,
he was greatly relieved to find that they were " so
nearly at one about Hegelianism " ; and that, though
he was far from accepting some elements in the book,
he had never ceased to think that " as against construc
tive Hegelianism " it was the most formidable piece of
work that had appeared. Another contributor to the
early volume, Professor D. G. Ritchie, noted that in
the second edition of Hegelianism and Personality, Seth
modified his statement that separate individuals were
" absolutely and for ever exclusive," and said instead :
" Whatever be the mode of their comprehension within
the all-containing bounds of the divine life, it is certain
that, as selves, it is of their very essence to be rela
tively independent and mutually exclusive centres of
existence/' " With the revised version of this passage/'
Professor Ritchie added, " I am delighted to find myself
in agreement." I

As soon as the second series of Balfour Lectures was

1 Darwin and Hegel (1893), p. 100 n. The references in Hegelianism
and Personality are : ist ed., p. 64 ; 2nd ed., p. 69.

56 MEMOIR

published, Mr Balfour wrote, on December 20, 1887,
saying that the success of the Lectureship had even
exceeded his expectations, and suggesting that a third
course should be given. He added considerately : " Take
your own time about it." Seth availed himself both of
the invitation and of the attached permission ; and
three years passed before he reported to Mr J. B.
Capper that he was busy preparing the course, which,
however, " showed a strange reluctance to get itself
written." He also wrote to Professor Laurie : " My
lectures, according to the shape they have taken,
will deal mainly with our old friend (or enemy ?)
the external world. The Neo-Kantian treatment of
' the object ' will come in for consideration . . .
' Knowledge and Reality or Idealism and Realism '
would, I think, correctly describe the subject, but a
double title is perhaps a mistake." Finally, the course
was announced as on Realism. A few weeks before the
lectures were delivered Seth wrote to Mr Balfour :
' This epistemological question seems to me very
ambiguously dealt with by modern Kantians and Neo-
Hegelians, and equally so by empirical idealists — so
that I hope what I have to say may not be altogether
untimely."

As the Lectures form the latter part of the present
volume there is no call for comment on them here, but
a word is perhaps needed as to their subsequent history.
Immediately after the delivery of the Lectures, Seth
wrote to Professor Laurie : " I am determined to keep
them in hand and work the subject out before publishing,
treating all sides of it and guarding against misappre
hension." But this intention was not fully accom
plished. Later in 1891 Seth was appointed to succeed
Professor Campbell Fraser in Edinburgh University ;
and Mr Balfour agreed that publication in the Philoso-

MEMOIR 57

phical Review l would serve the immediate purpose of
bringing them before the students of philosophy, until
the writer should have time for the thorough revision
which he had in mind. But the larger responsibilities
which Seth found awaiting him in Edinburgh, and
perhaps also some shifting in his central interest from
epistemology to other branches of philosophy, caused
this revision to be postponed. Although he still had it
in mind in the summer of 1893, it was finally abandoned ;
so it is only now that the third series of Balfour Lectures
can take its place beside the familiar volumes containing
the first and second series.

1 The Review was edited by Dr Schurman, who was at this time
Dean of the Sage School of Philosophy in Cornell University.

CHAPTER V.

ST ANDREWS.

1887-1891.

IN the summer of 1887 the Chair of Logic, Rhetoric
and Metaphysics in the University of St Andrews became
vacant through the death of Professor Spencer Baynes,
editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Seth applied
for and was appointed to the chair, which embraced the
two subjects of his special love, Philosophy and Litera
ture. His departure caused great regret to his Cardiff
friends, and he left them with a like regret, but with
no hesitations, saying : "At last my own country sees
fit to provide me with bread." Several of these friends
found their way gladly to the Seths' new home,
' Mayfield/ during the years they remained in St
Andrews — years of strenuous work and tranquil
happiness.

Soon after arriving, Seth wrote to W. P. James : "I
am not yet in a state to correspond with my friends,
being involved for my sins in the mysteries of Celtic
and Anglo-Saxon Literature. The former, I believe,
is a nemesis for leaving Wales. . . . We like the place
here, but often think back to Cardiff and Cardiff friends.
The students are a pleasant set of fellows. I have 35
for Logic and Psychology and 24 for Literature." Among
these was one from a Perthshire village, William Menzies,

MEMOIR 59

afterwards one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools,
to whom we are indebted for the vivid account of Seth's
work and influence which follows.

" Andrew Seth was at St Andrews in the late eighties
of last century, the period during which I was fortunate
enough to be a student there. His influence in these
years was undoubtedly the strongest in the University,
and for some of us it is not too much to say that the
University was transformed by it. He was then in his
early prime, and various circumstances no longer ex
isting contributed to strengthen the authority he would
normally have exercised anywhere in virtue of his
personality and his outstanding gifts as a teacher and
thinker.

"At St Andrews in those days life was quiet and
favourable to meditation and study. The University
dominated the little town. It was the townsfolk's chief
concern, and living for the students was incredibly
cheap and good. The great Girls' School was still quite
small, and even golf was little talked of. It was possible
to be acquainted with student golfers of championship
form and to be scarcely aware that they played the
game. The difference in the interest excited by golf
then and now is well brought out by a small incident
that occurred as late as the summer of 1890. Observing
in the course of a walk across the links with Seth a large
group of one or two hundred people, I said, " What
crowd can that be ? " The professor raised his eyes,
and, after studying the group for some seconds, re
marked, " I think that must be the Golf Champion
ship." Besides golf there was football, and for some
of us drilling or Saturday shooting practice in con
nection with the ' O.T.C.,' or the Volunteer Corps,
standing in those days for the present-day ' O.T.C.'

Walking was the commonest recreation or means of
taking exercise. Summer sessions were non-existent,

60 MEMOIR

nor were there any women students, and tennis, dancing
and evening parties were virtually unknown. Univer
sity lecturing practically finished at two o'clock, and the
afternoons and evenings were free. It was a simple
mode of life, centred mainly round the intellectual
activity of the University and ignoring many import
ant social factors ; but there was an absence of dis
traction about it and a not unwholesome austerity
which assisted study and prepared us for a thorough
appreciation of good teaching.

" Nor in the conditions prevailing within the Univer
sity itself was there anything likely to hinder the im
mediate recognition of a new-comer of Seth's calibre.
The Chair of Moral Philosophy was then held by William
Knight, the well-known editor of Wordsworth, whose
main interest was Literature. As a teacher of Philosophy
he was not effective. Lewis Campbell in the Greek
Chair was a revered figure. Attainments such as his
would have graced any university, and his mere presence
amongst us was an uplifting influence of singular value.
But it has to be admitted that the best of Campbell
was in his published works ; his class lecturing was not
comparable to Seth's. Later on Burnet in Campbell's
Chair was a power in the University, but that was
after Seth left. In my own time the strongest indi
vidual influence was undoubtedly Seth's. For some few
of us he was almost the one thing that counted, and to
all of us he meant a great deal.

" It must not be forgotten that at that time under the
regime of the old seven subjects curriculum, since so
unfortunately given up, Philosophy was an obligatory
subject ; and the influence of philosophy professors,
therefore, embraced the whole body of students, and
was not confined, as it might be now, to a limited section.
Seth, moreover, was also Professor of English, and
throughout his term at St Andrews he was thus doubly
in contact with all Arts students, and that by means of
two of the most important and vitalising subjects in the
whole curriculum. The impression which he made on

MEMOIR 61

his arrival was instantaneous, and it was lasting. From
the first he seemed to embody all those qualities which
the Scottish student most desires in his professor, and
to which even the least thoughtful of them pay an
instinctive homage. I can recall his inaugural address,
the tall, slightly stooping figure, the measured delivery,
the pensive youthful face and the thick hair abundantly
sprinkled with grey ; and I remember the ingenuous
answer made me by a fellow-student on my referring
after the address to those signs of age in one so young,
' When you have done as much " grinding " as him
perhaps your own hair will be just as white/

"A small matter worth noting, for it is a significant
tribute to Seth's personality, was the invariably sober
demeanour of the students in his classroom. Even in
his absence they were relatively quiet, with a general
avoidance of the noisy and harmless demonstrations
common elsewhere. Indeed they behaved less like St
Andrews students of those days than people waiting
for a service in church.

" In thinking of his teaching at St Andrews the main
characteristics that come back to me at this distance
of time are : the extraordinarily convincing nature of
his exposition, TreiOa) ris eTretcdOi^ev eVl TO £9 %etXecrt^ ;
the uniform lucidity and finish of his language ; the
closely knit coherence and cogency of his argument ;
and the inspiring level of sober eloquence to which
it would insensibly rise on rare occasions under the
pressure of the thought behind it.

" He did not disdain picturesque locutions, and the
felicitous use of such expressions, whether his own or
borrowed, was common enough with him to make it a
feature of his lecturing style. ' The rivets of experi
ence/ ' the spout behind the clouds/ show what is
meant. The impression which his ordinary lecturing
style merely as language made on the ear was peculiarly
satisfying ; and I am tempted to connect with this
characteristic as in some degree accounting for it the
practice implied in an admonition which he once gave

62 MEMOIR

myself for the improvement of my class essays : ' You
should first sound/ he said, ' each sentence to yourself
before putting it down on paper/ He was not averse
to poetical quotation and in his philosophy lectures
quoted occasionally, though but sparingly and never
merely for the sake of ornament. In his lectures on
English, on the other hand, his taste for literature and
his intense love of good poetry came fully and power
fully to light. It was this quality above everything
else which inspired and shaped his English lectures,
and would have lent them almost alone a perfectly
adequate degree of life and character. His course was
unpretentiously conceived — Seth was but an amateur
in English — but the lecturer's great power of appre
ciation and his even more singular power of communi
cating his own appreciation to others were in themselves
more than sufficient to make it a memorable experience.

" He was sensible to all kinds of poetry, and in those
days showed a special fondness for Keats ; but his
temperamental affinity for the more elevated kind where
Literature and Philosophy meet was obvious. With
Wordsworth, Dante, Goethe and the Shakespeare of the
Tragedies he was thus in his proper element, and I
have heard him read out with fervour in his thrillingly
beautiful voice — in what connection I cannot now recall
—the whole of the great passage on the misery of
Human Life from the Third Book of Lucretius. Verses
of his own composition appeared on several occasions in
the College Magazine. Their finished form and grave
beauty of sentiment were highly characteristic, and
Lewis Campbell, a fastidious judge, thought extremely
well of them.

" In lecturing on the poets he quoted a great deal.
In fact the more important the poet the longer and
the more numerous became the passages quoted. It
was as if his chosen method was to stand aside as far as
possible and let us see or rather hear the poet for our
selves. Whatever the reason there is no doubt that in
adopting this procedure he was happily inspired, if only

MEMOIR 63

because of his voice, which was low, clear and instantly
and faithfully responsive to every shade of thought and
feeling — a voice in fact made for speaking verse just as
it should be spoken. Lines said as he could say them
would often impress themselves at once and perma
nently on the mind, and there were many I thus remem
bered. Here are a few —

' After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.'

' To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.'

' Full on this casement shone the wintry moon
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast.'

' If this fail,

The pillared firmament is rottenness
And earth's base built on stubble/

' Yet some there be that by due steps aspire

To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.'

These are only a few among many lines of English
poetry which I have never read since without being
reminded of Seth and the exact tone of voice in which
he delivered them when I first heard them read out by
him in the English classroom at St Andrews. One small
circumstance connected with his reading of the passage
from Marlowe's Tamburlaine beginning —

' The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown
That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair,'

lingers in my memory. In the course of this passage
occur the words : ' Still climbing after knowledge in-

64 MEMOIR

finite/ Seth must have felt their force very strongly;
for, after finishing the passage, he returned to them
for a moment and kept repeating them in a half whisper
to himself. They had evidently struck a highly
sympathetic chord in his imagination

" In both Philosophy and Literature Seth's own pre
dilection was for depth and solidity rather than mere
extensiveness, and wide discursive reading on the sub
jects of his lecture was not a habit which he much
encouraged. Acting himself on the principle of multum
non multa, he led us to think that it was much better
for us at that stage to spend our time in wrestling for
ourselves with the problems of Philosophy, as they
occurred in the writings of two or three representative
thinkers, than in reading what had been said about them
by commentators and historians. So, though he did not
actually dissuade us from discursive accessory reading
and indeed recommended at the beginning of each course
a number of works for consultation and reference, he
would in his own lectures refer to these but slightly,
confining his attention almost entirely to the class-
books prescribed. What these were in the Ordinary
Class I cannot recall. In the Advanced Class, which
was the really important one, for it was in it that the
professor gave of his best and that the significance of
Philosophy was first revealed to us, the works studied
were : Mill's Logic, the Thecetetus in the Greek, and,
much the most important of all, The Critique of Pure
Reason. Seth, I remember, was very sympathetic with
Mill and very good and full on the Thecetetus, the subject
of which probably had a special attraction for him at
the time because of his own preoccupation with the
question of Epistemology. It was on Kant, however,
approached by a series of excellent lectures on his pre
decessors from Descartes downwards, amongst which
the lectures on Leibnitz and an impressive and elevated
exposition of Spinoza stand conspicuously out in my
recollection, that the main part of the professor's work

MEMOIR 65

in this course was concentrated. He gave us lecture
after lecture on the Critique in the endeavour to make
us realise by different methods of approach that with
this work we had reached the great clearing-house of
modern Philosophy and were in living contact with all
its main problems.

" In the course of the session we wrote several essays,
one of them on the difficult subject of Kant's conception
of Causality. The degree of reflection and research in
volved in such work no doubt benefited us considerably,
but what I chiefly remember in connection with it were
the professor's elucidations. Whatever else our own
efforts had failed to effect, they had at least the advan
tage of putting us into the best possible state for com
prehending and appreciating at something like its full
value the sure and illuminating treatment of the subject
given by the professor on the return of each essay.

" It was possible for Honours students at St Andrews
in those days to be in quite exceptionally intimate
contact with their professors. Very few men thought of
Honours then. In some subjects, indeed, and these
standard Arts ones, Moral Philosophy for example, no
Advanced Courses were held at all, and there were none
in Logic either till Seth started them. The briefness of
his stay in St Andrews did not, I think, give him time
for more than two, the first of which was the one I had.
In these courses the relationship between the professor
and his pupils was all the warmer and more fruitful
for the fact that the classes were so small. I think the
class of the year succeeding my own numbered but three
or four, the keenest of whom were David Irons and
John Smart, both for different reasons conspicuous
figures amongst their fellow-students. Smart was known
as a man of literary bent, he was editor of the College
Magazine and played a leading role in the Students
Representative Council ; while Irons was at first prob
ably better known as an athlete than as a scholar.
Smart's true vocation was literature, and before his

E

66 MEMOIR

death a few years ago he had acquired with the dis
criminating scholarly public a high reputation for critical
insight and scholarship of the soundest type. He first
made a name for himself by a book on The Ossianic
Question. A fine study of Milton's Sonnets followed,
and a posthumous work on Shakespeare, embodying the
results of much reflection and original research, was
widely and warmly welcomed. Smart's deflection from
his ingrained constitutional bent for letters was but
temporary, but that it occurred at all serves to show
the strength of the attraction exercised by Seth.

" Irons' case was more striking. Unlike Smart, he
had a strong natural affinity for Philosophy, but it was
an affinity which but for Seth's happening to be in St
Andrews he might never have discovered. He entered
Seth's class and suddenly found himself. From that
moment Philosophy seemed to him the one way of life
worth following, and follow it he did with single-minded
and unswerving ardour until his early death in America
many years ago. When I knew him, the two over
mastering interests in his life were his passion for Philo
sophy and his devotion to Seth, the two being almost
indistinguishably fused in his mind.

" But though probably none of his St Andrews students
felt Seth's influence quite so much as Irons, he was not
the only one to feel it strongly. And, indeed, there was
something quite out of the common about Seth's sheer
effectiveness as a teacher of Metaphysics in those days.
This showed itself not merely in ability to command
attention and to stimulate interest or intellectual curi
osity. Any other teacher who to similar knowledge
and talents united an equal or nearly equal devotion to
the subject might have managed as much as that. But
Seth did more. He made Metaphysics not merely inter
esting but exciting. The really distinguishing feature of
his teaching was the glowing and fervid character of
the interest he had the power of arousing in us by what
was nevertheless an appropriately severe and strictly

MEMOIR 67

logical treatment of his subject. I can recall, for example,
the state of tumultuous emotion in which I found Irons
and Smart immediately after a certain lecture on Spinoza,
which in the tense absorption of all concerned had in
sensibly lengthened out from the regulation period of one
hour to two.

" I once heard Pringle-Pattison say that great meta
physicians could be divided into two classes, according
as in each case the prime motive, the original impulse
to Speculation, could be regarded as mainly ethical or
mainly intellectual. His own place, unless I am mis
taken, would be in the first group among thinkers such
as Plato and Spinoza. In his metaphysical speculations
the ultimate ethical interest, I think, might always be
felt as the essential and fundamental source of their
vitality. It was beyond us then to discern this char
acteristic or its bearings with any clearness ; but, if it
was real, as I believe it was, its existence would have
to be reckoned with as perhaps the strongest single
factor in his power over us as a teacher. It was a power
which could serve in itself as a concrete refutation of
that common view of Philosophy expressed in the words
of a well-known French writer : ' The great weakness
of Philosophy will always lie in its inability to appeal to
the feelings/ '

It seems appropriate to add to Mr Menzies' account
of the years during which Seth taught English Literature
as well as Philosophy, three from the slender sheaf of
poems which won praise from Lewis Campbell, and
which their author printed years after for his children.
The first was written in 1880, and the second and third
date from the St Andrews days.

68 MEMOIR

ST DENIS.

When I have gazed upon the storied tombs
Reared o'er the famous dead, in hallowed crypt
Have seen the velvet rotting round their bones —
Then have I longed, in thinking of my end,
For sun and sky, sweet air, and breeze-blown grass.

Lay me where the whispering trees

Net the sunlight over me ;

Green and gold my pall shall be
'Neath their sylvan traceries.

Let the brown bird o'er my head

Call his mate among the leaves ;

When the reaper binds his sheaves,
His smooth song shall lull the dead.

THE DAY AFTER.

But yesterday, through mist and gloom,

We bore him to his rest ;
To-day the joyous sunshine floods

The bay from east to west.

It sleeps upon the time-worn towers
And on the new-made grave,

And out to sea the white-winged gull
Flashes along the wave.

O Life that cradlest all our lives !

We wake and then we sleep ;
For life or death thou wilt not break

Thine ancient silence deep.

MEMOIR 69

SALVE, MAGNA PARENS !

Birthplace of our immortal years

Dear Earth, upon whose breast we played,
Whose streams we strayed by, in whose lanes

We wandered once as man and maid

Dear as first love thy fields and woods,
The flush of spring and June's deep green,

And dear the autumn-purpled moor,
The far-off peak in wintry sheen.

The flying splendours of the morn,
The pools that keep the evening light,

The silver sickle of the moon

And star-sown spaces of the night.

Mother beloved, O not in vain

Our spirits' nurse, thou ancient Earth !

Thy beauties fade not from our sight,
Where'er our souls again have birth.

Deep in our hearts they mirrored lie,
Beyond the mists of death they shine ;

The winds that blow about thy hills
Still, still will stir our pulse like wine.

Else were we dead in very sooth,

Or ghosts within a ghostly land,
Where the unavailing shadows flit

Cheerless along the dusky strand.

7o

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST YEARS IN THE EDINBURGH CHAIR.

1891-1897.

WHEN Professor Campbell Fraser resigned the Chair of
Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh,
Seth at once became a candidate. His most formidable
competitor was Robert Adamson, at this time Professor
in Owens College, Manchester, and afterwards in the
University of Glasgow. Adamson's learning and pene
trating intellect had long before won the respect of
his fellow-philosophers, and not least of Seth himself ;
but he had published very little during the previous
decade, while Seth's recent volumes had marked him
out as a thinker whose originality and critical power
found fitting expression in a singularly apt and lucid
literary style. On July 8, 1891, the result was known,
and Seth wrote to Professor Laurie :—

"It is in every way very gratifying. Be sure that I
do not forget how much your untiring efforts have con
tributed to the result. I do not lose sight either of the
serious aspects of the thing, for it is undoubtedly a
serious matter to reflect that one has reached the goal
of one's ambition. It remains to make a good use of the
position, and I think with the fresh stimulus and the
greater leisure in summer, I may : I hope I have not
yet ceased to think and to learn."

MEMOIR 71

Seth's thirty-fifth year had indeed brought him, not
only to the climacteric of his life — in Dante's phrase,
il mezzo del cammin — but to the position in the academic
world towards which he had long looked. For nearly
ten years he had been recognised as a coming leader of
idealistic thought. For four years he had taught in the
oldest university of his native land. But now he entered
on his main life-work, following that of the man to
whom he owed his first impulse to philosophy. Campbell
Fraser's own feeling regarding the appointment stands
on record in the last chapter of his Biographia Philoso-
phica : " My hope for the Chair of Hamilton, and
through it for the university as well as for philosophy
in Scotland, was happily realised in the appointment of
my distinguished successor, who fitly represents philo
sophy in the city of David Hume, Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton and James
Frederick Ferrier."

Among his colleagues in the Faculty of Arts, Seth
found several who had been his teachers fifteen years
before. Henry Calderwood occupied the Chair of Moral
Philosophy, and in spite of wide differences of outlook
and philosophical method, the two men worked together
for six years harmoniously and with mutual respect.1
Masson, Tait and Blackie also remained ; and before
long Seth received from Blackie an invitation to join a
circle for the study of Greek tragedy, addressed in a
handwriting which must have been the despair of many
a postman, especially as the writer always placed beside
the address a short text or quotation in Greek. On
July 24 Seth wrote to a Cardiff friend that he would
now be free from the heavy work as an external examiner,
which had hitherto occupied much of his time : " It is

1 Seth's estimate of Calderwood as a philosopher will be found in
his Memoir of James Seth, p. xv, where he especially notes Calder
wood 's " fine natural courtesy."

72 MEMOIR

a grand thought that I have had my last bout with exam,
papers, at least on that colossal scale. . . . And I have
an assistant too in the winter ! The letters I get from
that assistant are like precious ointment, and enable
me, more than anything else, to realise my new dignity/'
The assistant was Mr R. P. Hardie, afterwards Reader
in Ancient Philosophy in the University, who had
brought back from Oxford to his native city a deep
interest in Greek thought and especially in Aristotle,
and who proved not only an invariably helpful colleague
but a close and valued friend during nearly forty
years.

Three months after Seth's election to the Edinburgh
chair Mr Balfour became Chancellor of Edinburgh
University. So in the service of the University another
link was formed, which lasted for the same long period.
The new Chancellor took a keen interest in everything
that concerned the teaching of philosophy ; and a few
years later, when Seth launched a scheme for the found
ing of an Honours Philosophy Library — now associated
with the name of Lord Haldane — he was one of the first
contributors.

Seth's Inaugural Address in the chair which he adorned
for twenty-eight years was delivered on October 26,
1891. * It began with the tribute to his predecessor and
the account of the awakening of his own interest in
philosophy which have been already quoted, and went
on to describe the threefold discipline, in logic, psy
chology and the history of philosophy, which lay before
those who entered on the course. Now that Seth had
emerged from his short experience of the teaching of
that English Literature which he never ceased to study
with delight, he was able to direct fuller attention than
before to psychology in its modern developments ;
though from the outset he looked forward to the appoint -

1 Reprinted in Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 24 ff.

MEMOIR 73

ment of a specialist Lecturer in Psychology, which took
place fifteen years later.

The Inaugural Address made it clear that he looked
on the study of the metaphysical systems of the past
as " one of the richest parts of the training afforded by
a philosophical chair," and ended with a deeply felt
confession of his own philosophic faith. After acknow
ledging the grandeur of Hegel's interpretation of the
progress of life and mind to its culmination in man, he
went on to say : " The achievements of the world-
spirit do not move me to unqualified admiration, and I
cannot accept the abstraction of the race in place of the
living children of men. Even if the enormous spiral of
history is destined to wind itself at last to a point which
may be called achievement, what, I ask, of the multi
tudes that perished by the way ? ' These all died, not
having received the promises/ What if there are no
promises to them? To me the old idea of the world
as the training-ground of individual character seems to
offer a much more human, and, I will add, a much more
divine, solution than this pitiless procession of the car
of progress." To many old students these words will
recur as giving the keynote of the deeper teaching of
their old master in the well-remembered Logic Class
room.

Nor did they fail to awaken echoes from other centres
of thought. One of the most significant came from
Hegel's old University of Jena, in a letter bearing a
signature destined to become widely known during the
two following decades — that of Rudolf Eucken. The
leader of ' activist ' idealism in Germany acknowledged
the pleasure with which he had received the Inaugural
Address of one whom he greeted as a fellow-worker in
the cause of a fundamental refashioning of the spiritual
life of mankind (cine durchgreifende Reform in dem
Geistesleben der Menschheit). He went on to congratu-

74 MEMOIR

late him on his transference to the University which
was considered in Germany the most notable in the
English-speaking world (die Universitdt die bei uns in
Deutschland filr die bedeutendste oiler Universitdten
englischer Zunge gilt) ; and remarked that traditional
roles were reversed when Germans had become dis
trustful of metaphysics (Antimetaphysiker), and looked
to England for a new impulse in philosophy. This
impulse Eucken found and welcomed in the closing
passages of the Address.

Seth's conscientiousness in preparing for his class
lectures comes out in a letter written during his third
winter in Edinburgh to Professor Samuel Alexander,
who had inquired about the third series of Balfour
Lectures : " I can well believe you have been full of
work this session. I find myself still absurdly occupied
with my lectures from day to day, and have registered
a solemn vow to do some steady work this summer
towards putting them into better shape/'

When Andrew and Eva Seth moved from St Andrews
in the autumn of 1891, they settled in the house at
16 Churchhill, which became the Edinburgh home of
the family for just forty years. They had now four
children — Marjorie, Norman, Ernest and Elinor ; and
in the six years that followed the two youngest sons,
Siegfried and Ronald, were born. The new home was
not far from the home of Seth's student days, at a higher
point of the ridge which slopes gently westward from
the base of Arthur's Seat to the Boroughmuir, where in
old days was the rallying point of Scottish armies.
Close by was the Bore Stone, where the King's standard
was set up, and but little farther away was Merchiston
Castle, the venerable building in which John Napier
invented logarithms early in the seventeenth century,
and which two hundred and fifty years later became a

MEMOIR 75

famous school. To it the two younger boys went at a
later time.

The garden of the Seths' new home sloped to the
south, and beyond it were other large gardens contain
ing not a few fine trees. Over these could be seen the
western end of Blackford Hill, and to the south-west
the noble line of the Pentlands above Swanston — the
scarped ridge of Caerketton and the green dome of
Allermuir. Seth's study was on an upper floor, and the
whole wide sweep of the hills was within view as he sat
at his desk.

In April 1892, Seth returned to St Andrews to receive
the degree of Doctor of Laws, and was heartily wel
comed by students and former colleagues ; and a year
later he and his wife carried out a plan which had
been several times made and postponed — to visit her
mother. Ten weeks were spent in Germany, and on
June 17 he wrote to Professor Laurie from Suderode
in the Harz Mountains : " It does one's heart good to see
hills again after the endless sandy flats of which North
Germany mainly consists. I could not bring myself to
go near any of the Berlin professors. These ceremonial
visits interrupt a holiday frame of mind. I like to travel
' in the strictest incognito ' (as one reads in the news
papers), and keep my evenings for the opera and the
play. Four evenings were accordingly devoted to the
Wagnerian cycle — the Ring der Nibelungen."

A pleasant glimpse of the Seth family during an
Argyllshire holiday in August 1895 is given in a letter
from Professor Campbell Fraser, who was himself re
visiting his native country by Loch Etive : "I must
send a few words of gratitude for the happy hours I
spent with you, and the beautiful picture of your rural
life which they have left in memory. It was delightful
to see the family bathing procession, and the youngsters
in the woods as I drove back to Loch Nell."

76 MEMOIR

In 1896 Seth was invited by Mr Balfour to join the
' Synthetic Society/ which had been formed to " con
tribute towards a working philosophy of religious belief/'
The members at this time were Balfour, George Wynd-
ham, the Bishop of Rochester (Edward Talbot), Charles
Gore, Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, R. H. Hutton of the
Spectator, R. C. Jebb and Wilfrid Ward. At each meeting
a short paper was read and discussion followed. Seth
was often prevented from attending the meeting of the
' Synthetic ' by the work of his chair, but when he
could do so he highly appreciated the opportunity of
meeting men whose interpretation of religion differed
widely in detail, but who brought to these discussions
not only great ability but a common serious purpose.

The field of academic ceremonial made little appeal
to Seth, as is shown by the letter to Professor Laurie
lately quoted, though no man could carry through his
part with greater dignity. But in 1896 he made one
exception. The ' College of New Jersey/ which was
founded in 1746, was preparing to celebrate its hundred
and fiftieth anniversary by assuming formally the title
which it had commonly borne for long — that of the
University of Princeton. Throughout its earlier history
it was marked by a Puritan tradition largely derived
from Scotland. Two of its most distinguished Presidents
were John Witherspoon, a Scottish Calvinist divine and
teacher, who was appointed in 1768 and steered the
young College firmly through the troubled waters of
the American War of Independence ; and James M'Cosh,
author of a book on Scottish Philosophy, who took
office exactly a hundred years later. It was thus natural
that Princeton should wish to have a representative
from a Scots university among those who came to her
Sesquicentenary, and that Seth should be warmly wel
comed as representing especially the Scots tradition in
philosophy. His colleague, Professor Calderwood, urged

MEMOIR 77

him to go, and, along with Mr Hardie, made his absence
possible by taking his classes when the session of 1896-97
opened.

Seth crossed the Atlantic at the end of September,
and before going to Princeton visited Cornell, where
his brother James had just become Sage Professor of
Moral Philosophy, and where he gave a public lecture
on ' Optimism and Pessimism/ On this occasion Presi
dent Schurman was able to introduce his friend to an
American audience. By the middle of October, Andrew
Seth reached Princeton, where the days preceding the
actual celebration were devoted to a series of lectures
by distinguished guests. The three lecturers from Britain
were Professor (now Sir) J. J. Thomson, Professor
Dowden, and Seth himself, whose contribution was pub
lished under the title Two Lectures on Theism. At the
Graduation Ceremony he again stood as ' one of three.'
This time he advanced with Professors William James
of Harvard and G. T. Ladd of Yale to represent Philo
sophy, in face of a great company of scholars and
scientists who also received honorary degrees.

There were other functions — an address from Presi
dent Cleveland, a procession of alumni and the in
evitable torch-light procession ; and in an account of
the ceremonies contributed to the Scotsman on his
return, Seth described in detail the Princeton yell at
an inter-collegiate football match. He was more seri
ously impressed by the recital of an ode by Dr Henry
Van Dyke, and the response to a speech at the final
banquet, in which Professor Goldwin Smith of Toronto
pled for greater mutual trust between the United States
and the British Empire. Only three years had passed
since President Cleveland's message on the Venezuela
dispute had stirred bitter feelings on both sides of the
Atlantic ; but so profoundly was the audience moved
by Goldwin Smith's " sombre and mournful eloquence "

78 MEMOIR

that his speech ended with cheers for Old England
raised in the body of the hall. As the reader of to-day
looks through the report of the gathering in the Prince-
tonian journal, that which awakens his keenest interest
is a eulogy entitled ' Princeton in the Nation's Service '
by a young Professor of Law. It ends with a glowing
description of the university of the speaker's dreams,
and with the question : " Who shall show us the way
to this place ? " The speaker was Woodrow Wilson.

Seth summed up his impressions in a letter to Mr
Balfour : "I had a thoroughly enjoyable time on the
other side, not only at Princeton, but at Harvard,
Cornell and other places, including Niagara. The kind
ness and hospitality one received everywhere was un
bounded, and the interest of the visit was very great."
Towards the end of a stormy homeward passage on the
Lucania he wrote in a similar strain to his brother at
Cornell, and told how the discomfort of the voyage had
been lightened by the presence of other delegates return
ing from the celebration, and not less by the reading of
Sentimental Tommy, then newly published.

Early in 1897 Two Lectures on Theism and Man's
Place in the Cosmos both appeared. These volumes
may be taken as placing the copestone on Seth's work
as a thinker up to this point, and both contain much
of his most polished and incisive writing. Although the
Two Lectures are avowedly only an outline, they definitely
point the way towards an ethical theism set free from
the defects of Pantheism on the one hand and Deism
on the other. The larger volume in its original form
contained the Inaugural Address of 1891 and essays
published during the five following years on Huxley's
Romanes Lecture, Balfour's Foundations of Belief,
Miinsterberg's theory of psychological automatism and
Bradley's Appearance and Reality. In an enlarged
edition published in 1902 there were added an apprecia-

MEMOIR 79

tion of Campbell Eraser's Gifford Lectures and a long
paper on "The Life and Opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche,"
which appeared at a time when Nietzsche was still im
perfectly understood in this country.

The territory traversed in these essays is wide, and
they show Seth's power of constructive criticism in fields
that were not primarily his own — ethics in the essay on
Nietzsche and psychology in that on Miinsterberg. In
the short essay on Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, with
which the volume opens, there is one of the compara
tively rare passages in which he allows his latent moral
passion to appear, as he dismisses in a few scornful
sentences the immoralist theory of the family.

Seth himself claimed that there was an underlying
unity in the book, for all the essays treated at bottom
the same theme — " man's relation to the forces of
nature and to the absolute ground of things, or, in the
words of the title, man's place in the cosmos." — (Pref.)
This shows the movement, already noted, of his thought
at this time from epistemology to ontology ; yet the two
lay not far apart, and the first lecture in Theism gave
effective expression to the contention which he always
maintained, that " the knower is in the world which he
comes to know, and the forms of his thoughts, so far from
being an alien growth or an imported product, are them
selves a function of the whole " (p. 19). His criticism
of Mr Bradley also dealt in part with the theory of
knowledge. It called forth widespread interest, not only
for its matter but because of its effective form. A
writer had now appeared who could meet that master of
philosophic wit and raillery with " a fine-edged irony "
(to borrow a phrase of Seth's regarding Berkeley) hardly
less dexterous and penetrating than his own.

The original publication of the articles gathered in
Man's Place in the Cosmos brought to the author several
letters of more than passing interest. Mr William

8o MEMOIR

Blackwood, the head of the famous house which had
already published two of his books, wrote welcoming
him as a contributor to ' Maga.' Dr Martineau, then
in his eighty-ninth year, wrote on November 29, 1893 :
" I have read your essay on ' Man's Place in Nature '
with the keenest interest, and with all but unqualified
assent to its reasoning and its critical estimates through
out. I would fain express to you, if I could, the happy
confidence with which, at the end of life, I anticipate
from you the much-needed reaction from the dominant
Hegelian form of Idealism. My hopes in this respect
used to rest, as I often told him, on Thomas Hill
Green, whose noble moral nature was always pressing
him in that direction. And now it is my fancy that
his mission has devolved on you. It is a great trust ;
and may be executed with full acknowledgment of the
lofty influence, intellectual and ethical, exercised by
his genius and Edward Caird's during their period of
ascendancy. But they have not said the last word in
philosophy, and would be the first to repudiate the
pretension/'

The same day's post brought a long letter from a
thinker of a very different school, Mr Leslie Stephen,
to whose work reference was made in the article which
dealt primarily with Huxley's Romanes Lecture. " I
used to suppose that men of your way of thinking were
bound to hold that men of my way of thinking were
fools, and also to suppose that we were bound to return
the compliment. I am very glad to take your article
as an indication of the growing tendency — and I hope
growing on both sides — to greater courtesy and better
appreciation of each other. ... I cannot help believing
for my own part that there is more agreement between
us than appears — perhaps rather more than either of
us can precisely see at the moment. I wish that I were
in the position to have the advantage of an occasional

MEMOIR 81

talk with you ; when I am sure that I should learn-
even though I am growing rather too old and stiff in
the joints to change my habits of mind or body. I now
and then see your friend Haldane, when he is not im
mersed in briefs or parliamentary warfare ; and it is
always a great pleasure to meet him." Professor
Huxley wrote at the same time : " Accept my cordial
thanks for defending me and still more for understanding
me. I really have been unable to understand what my
critics have been dreaming of — when they raise the
objection that the ethical process being part of the
cosmic process cannot be opposed to it. They might
as well say that artifice does not oppose Nature, because
it is part of Nature in the broadest sense."

So also Mr Balfour, three years later, when the article
on his Foundations of Belief first appeared : " You have
done a real service, both to me and to any of my readers
who were fortunate enough to see what you have written,
by giving so admirable a summary of the general line
of argument which I have endeavoured to set forth.
I had almost gone to the length of saying that you are
the only critic of any importance who has taken the
trouble to find out what that line of argument really is ;
the rest seem chiefly interested in discussing such frag
mentary portions of the work as happen to be in collision
with their own private views."

But the essay which called for the largest body of
appreciative comment was that entitled "A New Theory
of the Absolute. ' ' Mr Bradley himself wrote on November
17, 1894 : " It is a great pleasure to see that you estimate
my work at sa high a value. I hope my book will be
useful as to some extent drawing conclusions explicitly
which many were drawing in private, and as raising
those questions which many were feeling should be
pressed to an answer one way or the other." He went
on to admit the justice of some of Seth's criticism, while

F

82 MEMOIR

soon after he sent an elaborate answer to a number
which he could not so accept.

Regarding the two books which Seth had sent him,
Baron Friedrich von Hugel wrote : " I have rarely
indeed seen anything with which I have found myself
in more constant sympathy and grateful agreement, or
which seemed to me as full of the most reverent spirit,
combined with a noble breadth of knowledge and of
outlook. ... I was glad when I was staying at Jena
with my close friend Professor Eucken, to find how well
he and his students know and love your work. . . .
Scattered about Europe I have some nine or ten philo
sopher friends and admired writers : among these you
count, if I may admit it, as one of the latter/'

Dr John MacCunn's appreciation has a lighter touch
than the rest : " Many thanks for a valuable and valued
book. I have hardly had a moment's time to look into
it. So that this is grace before meat, and by no means
meant as a substitute for the thanksgiving which I know
I shall feel impelled to render after partaking. Your
treatment of Huxley is the most justly appreciative yet
firmest I have read. And I welcome, I think, almost
everything you say about the new psychology. I dare
say it may come of psychological ignorance on my part ;
but I never meet the diagrams and the physiological
fluencies about ' paths of discharge ' and suchlike without
the feeling that, having set out to pursue philosophy, I
had fallen helpless into a natural science ambuscade."

Seth's helping hand was welcomed by many in a like
predicament.

83

CHAPTER VII.

THE HAINING.

1898-1914.

ANDREW SETH had now reached his forty-second year,
and the future seemed to lie clear before him with no
prospect of any sharp deviation from the path which
he had hitherto followed. But at this point a change
occurred which, to his friends at least, was sudden and
unlooked-for ; and he and his wife found themselves
in possession of a new home in the heart of the Border
country, and with it of the surname by which they
were henceforth known. To explain this change of scene
and of name we must go back for several generations.

During more than two centuries the estate of Haining
—the original Scots meaning of the name is ' enclosure/
part ' hained off ' — lying close to the ancient burgh of
Selkirk, belonged to a branch of a widely known Border
family, the Pringles. The lairds of Haining were men
of note in the eighteenth century, as one of them was
raised to the Scottish Bench in 1729 with the life title
of Lord Haining, and later his son, a judge of excep
tional eminence, assumed that of Lord Alemoor. But
during the nineteenth century the family fortunes and
influence declined, and the male line died out. Twice
the estate passed to a daughter, and in each case her
husband placed the name Pringle before his own. Thus

84 MEMOIR

it came about that first Mrs Pringle-Douglas, and then
her daughter, Mrs Pringle-Pattison, lived at the Haining.
Mrs Pringle-Pattison had no children, and she bequeathed
all her possessions to her husband if he survived her
without issue. But it remained to provide for the event
of his dying before her ; and she and her husband knew
something of the Seth family, with which he was dis
tantly connected through the Littles. So, in view of
the great promise shown by Andrew, then a lad of about
sixteen, she decided to insert his name in her will.

During the years that followed he heard occasionally
of or from Mrs Pringle-Pattison through his mother or
one of her sisters ; but if any expectation that he would
finally receive The Haining was aroused in his own mind,
he kept it concealed there. While he was at St Andrews
John Pringle-Pattison died, and ten years later his wife,
whose later years were clouded by persistent illness,
died also. Only then did the surprising fact become
known that she had bequeathed her whole estate to her
husband's distant cousin, on the condition that he
assumed the name Pringle-Pattison. The terms of her
will were clear ; but its provisions were so unusual that
they could hardly be expected to pass quite unchallenged.
More than one counter-claim was raised, but, largely on
the initiative of Pringle-Pattison (as he had now become),
these were settled without recourse to the courts ; and
he agreed as an act of grace to pay annuities to two
claimants who were advanced in years.

The way was thus clear for him to enter upon his
new domain. Its possession had both an attractive and
a burdensome aspect. Its situation in a land of romance,
at the very gates of the town in which Sir Walter Scott
held office for a generation as Sheriff of Ettrick Forest,
and within riding, or even walking, distance of Abbots-
ford and Melrose, appealed both to the poet in him and
to his patriotism as a Borderer by descent. " On another

Page Sit.

MEMOIR 85

side," Mr Capper has said, " the change in his position
appealed to his sense of humour, and he made a solemn
expedition to a distant burial-place of the Pringles, to
visit, as he told me, ' the tombs of his new ancestors/
His young family were of an age to profit to the full by
their enlarged opportunities of country life and to grow
up familiar with its society and pursuits; while they,
in turn, brought sunshine into a mansion which had
seen no children for a hundred years." x Nor was it
only within The Haining gates and by the wood-encircled
loch lying just beyond the house that their presence
brought about a change. The townsfolk of Selkirk, who
had for long watched the slow decay of an ancient
house, welcomed heartily the vigorous, clean-blooded,
young life \vhich now found a home there.

Haining House, like many Scottish country houses,
was built at two different periods, and in contrasted,
not to say incongruous, styles. The original part, prob
ably about four hundred years old, was a fine example
of the traditional style of the country, with rough-cast
walls and small windows. Part was demolished in 1794,
and there was added to what was left standing a new
part in the classical style, with a large portico at the
entrance, and high windows opening on a lawn which
sloped steeply down to the loch.

The main part of the estate lay south of the Et trick
Water, looking down upon Philiphaugh, where Yarrow
and Ettrick meet, and where the hitherto unbeaten
Montrose suffered his first defeat one misty morning in
1645. To the south-east it extended to the Water of
Ale, the perilous crossing of which figures in the tale of
Sir William of Deloraine's ride in the Lay of the Last
Minstrel. There were also three outlying portions. One
was north of the Tweed, Fairnilee, whose peel tower
inspired a romantic tale by Andrew Lang. A second,
1 Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. xvii.

86 MEMOIR

Alemoor Farm, was twelve miles to the south, by the
moorland loch from which the Ale flows ; and it was
from this that Andrew Pringle, the second of the judges
already mentioned, took his title, Lord Alemoor. The
third, also an upland farm, was named Adders toneshiels,
and lay to the south-east not far from the Limekilnedge
pass, by which Dandie Dinmont, like his creator, Sir
Walter himself, used to ride into Liddesdale.

The management of this scattered estate of over 7000
acres would have made a heavy call on the means and
time of its owner, even if the property had previously
been well maintained. But during the long period when
Mrs Pringle-Pattison was unable to supervise it, the
work of maintenance had been neglected, and her suc
cessor found heavy arrears awaiting him. At once he
set himself to master the problems of estate manage
ment, for which his previous academic life had in no
way prepared him. He had an able adviser in Mr Curie
of Melrose, one of a family distinguished by their
knowledge of archseology as well as of land. But
he never believed in delegating tasks which he could
perform himself, and he soon established a direct contact
with those who gained their living from the land which
had so unexpectedly come to him. Just as invitations
to stay at The Haining were generally written in his
own hand, so he attended in person to requests for
repairs and improvements on the estate. The public
burdens on agricultural land were not, indeed, as heavy
in the early years of his proprietorship as they became
later; but they were already considerable, and, along
with the other circumstances mentioned, made his task
far from easy on the financial side. He had to gain
experience from the outset in this sternly practical school
— one fact that he mentioned as having surprised him
was the large proportion of the estate revenue which
went in fencing alone — but his friends watched him as

MEMOIR 87

he applied his clear and resourceful intellect to a quite
unfamiliar situation, and gradually solved the problems
which confronted him. After some years he was able
to sell Fairnilee and Adderstoneshiels. To part with
Fairnilee was a real sacrifice to him ; but when this
was done he found himself at last with a sufficiency of
free capital to finance the remaining portions of the
estate.

As Pringle-Pattison gradually and patiently cleared
away the entanglements which met him when he first
went to The Haining, the interest of the work grew upon
him. In other directions he prepared for his new station
in life. He took riding lessons, though he did not follow
up his new accomplishment ; and in spite of his indifferent
eyesight he became a reasonably good shot, and before
many summers had passed his two elder boys were able
to join him in shooting over the estate.

Among the letters which arrived after the new owner
ship of The Haining was announced was one dated
March 15, 1898, from 10 Downing Street :—

" My dear Seth — or perhaps I ought to say now, Seth
Pringle-Pattison,—

I am delighted to hear of your good fortune, which
I should certainly not be if I thought it would cause
you, even for a moment, to abandon philosophy. I
hope, on the contrary, that you will now be able to choose
precisely the circumstances most favourable to original
work. — With every congratulation, Believe me, Yours
very sincerely,

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR."

In August of the same year Professor Campbell Fraser
wrote :—

" Let me thank your wife and you very much for our
three charming days at The Haining, the impression of

88 MEMOIR

which will not leave us soon. It was indeed a satisfaction
to see you all so happily settled amidst such surround
ings ; and you with an added career opened to you,
not less responsible than an academical one, associating
Scottish philosophy with a romance unprecedented in
its history. Long may you all enjoy and benefit by it
in every way/'

Next to welcoming his friends at The Haining there
was no part of Pringle-Pattison's life there which de
lighted him so much as the care of the beautiful trees
on the estate and the planning of fresh plantations.
Pruning and felling, especially round the house, he
carried out as far as possible himself, with the help of
his boys and of any guests to whom this occupation might
appeal. In his first months at The Haining he collected
a formidable outfit of axe, bill and various types of
saw, including a fearsome instrument known as the pole-
saw for the pruning of high branches. When he could
form a small forestry party, he supplied each with a
different tool ; and, when he was obliged to go alone,
he carried a smaller selection for his own use.

Other interests were provided by the customs and
traditions of Selkirk, handed down through several
centuries and still practised. As in other Border burghs,
the great day is that of the Common Riding in June,
when the Cornet for the year rides, suitably attended,
round the ancient Marches or boundaries of the town's
land. There is also the ancient Forest Club, consisting
largely of neighbouring landowners, of which Pringle-
Pattison was elected a member. The members meet
for dinner twice a year, clad in the traditional costume
of buff waistcoat and evening coat of archer green. The
fact that Sir Walter Scott was a member of the Club
appealed strongly to Pringle-Pattison's historical sense.

His wife's early memories of her home in a Silesian
manor made it natural for her to take up the thread of

MEMOIR 89

country life after long residence in cities, and she entered
fully into her husband's new interests. Their summer
home became a centre of wide hospitality, and some
times unexpected guests found their way there. One
photograph from the first years of the century shows the
commanding figure of General Booth along with The
Haining family and guests. He had come for a night
when addressing a series of meetings in the Border towns,
but no record survives of any theological discussion
between himself and his host. Many of those who found
their way to The Haining have already been named in
this Memoir, for no man was ever more loyal to old
friends than Pringle-Pattison. His own kinsfolk came,
and his early companions Mr Capper and Professor
Stalker brought their families, as did Dr Schurman
when visiting Europe. The MacCunns came, and, with
them or alone, Professor W. P. Ker. Lord Haldane
came when his official duties allowed, and his close
friend, Professor Hume Brown, for long Pringle-Pattison's
valued colleague in Edinburgh University where he held
the Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography. In
later years the Cardiff friend, already named, Mr W. P.
James, found his way to The Haining ; and there were
many more, including from time to time former members
of Pringle-Pattison's classes.

On first arrival, one of these friends has said, there
was sometimes a slight passing feeling of constraint, due
to the native shyness of the host ; but very quickly
this passed, and in half an hour talk would flow freely.
The circle was not dominated by either husband or
wife, but both together formed its centre, her invariable
kindness being set in relief by a shrewd judgment of
people and things, as his was by the " occasional and
delightful causticity " of his remarks, as well as by the
" sudden bursts of hilarity " of which another friend has
spoken. His laugh, like that of some other habitually

90 MEMOIR

serious men, had an explosive quality, which made it
singularly infectious.

But the deepest impression made on those who came
to know The Haining well was that described by one of
them as " its extraordinary atmosphere — patriarchal,
united, natural. ' ' The professor's intellectual life pursued
its own course, for he remained the only member of the
family who was interested in formal philosophy, but
this formed no barrier against the truest sympathy
between the children and both their parents. Even
with friends who had for long shared his own dominating
interests, the sharing was so complete that it could often
dispense with words. Mrs MacCunn has described the
" perfect silent understanding " between three of the
circle — her husband, Pringle-Pattison and W. P. Ker ;
and after the death of the last-named, Pringle-Pattison
set down his memory of one occasion when a large party
had climbed the Eildon Hills, and " W. P. very char
acteristically insisted on our taking the three heights in
their order. We rested on the third, and a little apart
from the young party W. P. crouched on a rock, and,
going near, I heard him chanting to himself the ' Flowers
laugh before thee in their beds ' verse of Wordsworth's
Ode to Duty."

With this we may join an account given by Professor
MacCunn in Our Friend, W. P.: " Perhaps the happiest
social function at which I have ever assisted was the
Yarrow Show of 1908. He [W. P. Ker] was staying
with us at Dryhope on St Mary's Loch, and we were
amused at his determination that we should all go to
this gathering. He was eager to meet his friends the
Pringle-Pattisons — when was he not anxious to meet his
friends ? — and to see Will Ogilvy's noble horsemanship.
The holms of Yarrow on a clear autumn day have a spell
all their own ; but for him behind all these were memories
of Christ's Kirk on the Green and Peebles to the Play."

MEMOIR 91

Expeditions such as those described to the triple
summit of the Eildons, or up Yarrow to Newark Castle
and St Mary's Loch, or to the still lonelier recesses of
Ettrick, or eastward as far as Dryburgh and Smailholm
Tower, were characteristic of summer days at The
Haining. The waggonette would convey the older
members of the party with generous provision for all
(unless a country inn formed the goal of the expedition) ,
while the younger would walk on ahead or act as scouts
and skirmishers on a generous supply of bicycles. But
that the push-bicycle had displaced the ponies of an
earlier day, Lockhart's description of the expeditions
which Sir Walter organised and led from Abbotsford to
the Eildons or Ettrick would apply almost unchanged
to those from The Haining nearly a century later.

If in the present section little attention has been paid
to chronology, this is due to the fact that life at The
Haining in spring, in summer, or at Christmas — when
the Christmas tree was honoured with an enthusiasm
worthy of Mrs Pringle-Pattison's native land — changed
only as the growth of the sons and daughters enabled
them to take a fuller share in the activities which their
parents planned. There was, however, one landmark,
for in the year 1909 a double event took place, which
called out the goodwill of the townsfolk of Selkirk as
well as those who lived on the estate itself — the Silver
Wedding of the parents and the Coming-of-age of the
eldest son.

Two years later history in the making knocked sud
denly and somewhat rudely at the doors of The Haining,
bringing some premonition of the events of 1914. Richard
Haldane, who had shortly before gone to the House of
Lords as Viscount Haldane of Cloan, had arranged to
come for a week-end visit in the latter part of August.
He duly arrived, but at that moment the Agadir crisis,
following a sudden railway strike, became acute. The

92 MEMOIR

local post-office was accustomed to take its Sabbath
rest undisturbed, and it took all the authority of the
Minister for War to persuade the reluctant officials
that their day of rest must on this occasion be sacrificed,
and all Sunday a steady stream of telegrams came and
went. To describe the course or ending of the crisis is
no part of our purpose here ; but it is worth noting
that even the pressure of these critical days did not
wholly thrust philosophy aside, for Lord Haldane wrote
on August 30 from Cloan : "I have copied out the
passage in the smaller Logic which seems to me to
contain the kernel of Hegel and to which I referred
when we were talking. I much enjoyed our talk. It is
rarely one meets in these days a fellow pilgrim."

93

CHAPTER VIII.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND CORRESPONDENCE
WITH FRIENDS.

1898-1914.

IT was only for a few months in 1898 that the title
' Professor Seth ' was in abeyance in the philosophical
department of Edinburgh University. We have seen
how it came to be relinquished by its previous holder,
but by the end of the year it was taken up again by his
brother James on his appointment to the Chair of Moral
Philosophy. The change may have been somewhat
confusing to those who were members of the University
before it took place ; but to the students of later
years there was a certain advantage in the fact that
two brothers, teaching closely related subjects, possessed
different surnames. Yet, if the truth must be told,
even those who most profoundly admired the elder
seldom troubled to use in ordinary talk any designation
longer than the convenient symbol, SP2.

The appointment of James Seth as colleague to his
brother inaugurated a collaboration which was perhaps
unique, and which brought great benefits to the Univer
sity during the next twenty-one years. At the end of
the previous year Pringle-Pattison (as he shortly after
wards became) wrote to ask the advice of Mr Balfour
on the situation caused by the death of " my good kind
colleague, Calderwood," and to find out how he would

94 MEMOIR

regard the candidature of his brother, then at Cornell,
for the Moral Philosophy chair — a step which was urged
by the three veteran philosophers of Edinburgh : Camp
bell Eraser, Hutchison Stirling and Laurie. In a most
judicial reply, Mr Balfour stated his view that James
Seth was the strongest of the probable candidates, and
so, on the principle that the post should go to the best
available man, was entitled to receive it. But, on the
other hand, he raised the questions how the prospect
of having two brothers in the professorships of philosophy
was likely to impress the electors, and whether students
of philosophy might not be deprived by this arrange
ment of the variety of teaching which they were entitled
to expect, even though each brother maintained his
originality and independence.

Finally, James Seth decided to stand, moved in part
by the persuasions of his friends in Edinburgh, and in
part, as his brother expressed it, by "an inextinguish
able yearning to return to his native land." He was
appointed to the vacant chair ; and with the brothers
were intimately associated in the philosophical depart
ment for many years Mr R. P. Hardie as Lecturer in
Ancient Philosophy, and Mr Henry Barker, who had
recently won the Shaw Philosophical Fellowship, as
Lecturer in Ethics and, till 1906, also in Advanced
Psychology.

One happy result of James Seth's return was that he
could now rejoin his mother, who had come back from
Canada to Scotland some years before. " His return
in honour to his native city gave her keen satisfaction.
She was a woman of remarkable force of character, in
whom depth of feeling was happily mated with a lively
sense of humour, and till her death in 1911 at the age
of eighty she presided over her son's household and
entertained his guests." 1 These words were written
1 A. S. Pringle-Pattison, Memoir of James Seth, p. xxv. f .

MEMOIR 95

by her eldest son fourteen years after her death ; and
later still he wrote acknowledging a friend's description
of an evening in her society, and added : " My mother's
laughter (to tears) and her interested face as she followed
the conversation round the table are eminently char
acteristic." It is, perhaps, not out of place to add that
successive generations of students who even for a short
time met the venerable mother, alert, dignified, kindly,
felt that they had discovered one main secret of the
distinction of the sons.

As such students look back, they will be in almost
complete agreement that there was little ground for
any fear that the philosophical teaching given by the
brothers in Edinburgh University would lack variety.
Both, indeed, held the same idealistic creed, though not
in exactly the same form. Both were single-minded,
disinterested, generous ; and the old words were true
of them, par nobile fratrum. Yet they showed their
greatness as teachers in markedly different ways. From
the start there was a difference in temperament ; for,
while both were naturally sensitive, the elder was at
once the stronger and the more reticent. James Seth
had a companionable nature, and was ever eager to
pass on his own cherished beliefs and enthusiasms to
younger men. Pringle-Pattison expressed his deeper
convictions with a certain hesitancy ; but even because
of this, those who had caught anything of the under
tones of his thinking felt his moments of self-expression
all the more memorable.

Hence it came about that the contrast between
Campbell Eraser and Calderwood, noted in Barrie's
Edinburgh Eleven twenty years earlier, was repeated in
the case of their successors. Each had his own enthusi
astic adherents. As in the earlier time, the Moral
Philosophy Class appealed to those whose philosophical
interest was only nascent or was of a practical type ;

96 MEMOIR

for Seth had an unusual power of reading the mind and
awakening the interest of the beginner in philosophy,
and he seldom allowed his attitude to a thinker or a
problem to remain in doubt. Pringle-Pattison, while
at least as clear in exposition, was slow to pronounce
final judgments, and his aim was rather that his students
should themselves seek solutions than that they should
accept conclusions because he held them. Hence it
was a commonplace that James Seth was at his best
in the Ordinary Class, while Pringle-Pattison's finest
teaching was reserved for the comparatively small
number who proceeded to Honours.

In one respect only did their special gifts fail to find
the most advantageous exercise ; and that was due,
not to any defect in either, but to the position of their
respective classes in the normal Arts curriculum. James
Seth's special gift was that of initiating the new-comer
into philosophy, while Pringle-Pattison's teaching — and
perhaps also the character of his subject — called for a
more definite philosophical interest and a more sustained
attention. Yet it was the Logic class which was for
long the larger, and which the majority of students
took first. It was not subject to the waves of disorder
which sometimes swept over other large classes in the
Scottish universities of the day ; yet among the two
hundred men and women who composed it, there were
some who had little bent for philosophy, and who at
times complained of the lecturer's pauses as he arranged
and rearranged the large sheets of manuscript on the
desk before him. But a much larger number realised
that he was steadily re-thinking, as he lectured, the
ideas towards which he sought to lead his hearers, and
that he never gave less than his best ; while there were
not a few who came growingly to understand the range,
the fineness and the balance of his philosophical outlook.
He did not use the Seminar method of discussion, which

MEMOIR 97

was brought from America and successfully practised
by his brother ; but in a different, and perhaps a subtler,
way he made his abler students feel that they were
taken into a true partnership in the quest of truth.

It was not his way to make the initial steps too easy,
and his Ordinary class opened with a month of Formal
Logic, which he believed to have real value as a disci
pline in exactness of thought. Next came the section
of the course on Psychology. Though not an original
worker in this field, he knew well what was being done
by others, and traced its outlines with his usual clarity
of phrase and illustration. As he advanced to such
topics as Association, Memory and the Concept, and
showed how they were treated in the period from
Descartes to Hume, he led up to the transition to the
Theory of Knowledge.

The last two months of the winter session were devoted
to a masterly introduction to the History of Meta
physics. This opened with a discussion, running through
three or four lectures, of the object and method of
philosophy. It was differentiated, he held, from science
as dealing with the whole of knowledge and providing
a " criticism of categories/' It was organic, moving as
a whole, and so no part of it could be regarded as settled
and done with. The course of speculative thought had
made it clear that many solutions of metaphysical
problems, once accepted, were illusory, since their con
sequences had proved untenable. Yet the value of the
historical study of philosophy was not merely negative,
for, though certain main types of thought recurred at
different epochs, the return to them was made at a higher
level. From this introduction Pringle-Pattison passed
on to a clear and stimulating survey of Greek philosophy,
and then after a rapid glance at the Hellenistic and
mediaeval period, to a treatment of modern philosophy
as far as Hume. In the Honours class he built on this

G

98 MEMOIR

foundation an exposition of Kant and post-Kantian
idealism and of Advanced Logic, with special reference
to the work of Bradley and Bosanquet.

Such was the main current of his teaching during the
first fifteen years of his professorship in Edinburgh.
There were minor variations from year to year ; but in
1906 there came a much larger change with the institu
tion of the long-hoped-for Lectureship in Psychology,
of which the late Dr W. G. Smith was the first holder.
This allowed Pringle-Pattison to concentrate on the
portions of his wide subject in which he was most at
home, and it also reduced his Ordinary class to a more
manageable size than before. There followed a further
change by which professors in the Arts Faculty began
to lecture during the summer session, which had till
then taken a quite subsidiary place in the Arts curriculum.
At the same time lectures in winter were reduced from
five to three days a week. This rearrangement, though
desirable on many grounds, appeared to Pringle-Pattison
as a somewhat mixed blessing ; since he had always felt
at home in the older Scots system of a long summer
vacation for study, thinking and preparation, in view
of the concentrated activity of teaching in the winter
months.

The interpretation of Modern Philosophy which he
gave to his students may be gathered in detail from
his books, and his gifts in this direction were well known.
Yet his power of interpreting Greek thought was not less
notable, though it only appeared in his last two books,
especially in the chapter entitled " Pre-existence and
Immortality in Plato/' l The ethical passion in Plato,
as well as " the large serenity of outlook " of which
Pringle-Pattison there spoke, struck responsive chords
in his own mind. But intellectually he was as much an

1 The Idea of Immortality, Lecture Hi. ; cf . Studies in the Philosophy
of Religion, Ch. vi. and vii.

MEMOIR 99

Aristotelian as a Platonist, for he had a profound belief
in development, while the study of history in its widest
sense rather than reasoning of the mathematical order
seemed to him the surest path to philosophical truth.

One memory which remains clear in the present writer's
mind, as he looks back over thirty years, is that of the
aptness and impressiveness of Pringle-Pattison's quota
tions, although in his Edinburgh classes he naturally
quoted more sparingly from the poets than in the
lectures on Literature of his St Andrews days. One such
quotation in the Honours class was the passage from
Lotze's Mikrokosmos on the trustworthiness and spiritual
significance of knowledge which he reproduced in his
Gifford Lectures.1 Another well-remembered quotation
came into his introductory course. He had reached
the " incomplete Socratics," and pointed out that,
opposite as the theories of Cynic and Cyrenaic appeared,
they had a certain point of contact in an attitude to the
world which separated both from the uncriticised views
of the ordinary practical man. Then he continued in
the words of Pater : " The saint, and the Cyrenaic
lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at least under
stand each other better than either would understand
the mere man of the world. Carry their respective
positions a point further, shift the terms a little, and
they might actually touch.

" Perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise
to their best, as understood by their worthiest repre
sentatives, to identification with each other. For the
variety of men's possible reflections on their experience,
as of that experience itself, is not really so great as it
seems ; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical
formula, filtering down into men's everyday existence,
reach the same poor level of vulgar egotism, so, we may
fairly suppose that all the highest spirits, from whatever

1 The Idea of God, p. 120 f.

ioo MEMOIR

contrasted points they have started, would yet be found
to entertain, in the moral consciousness realised by
themselves, much the same kind of mental company." l

These words represented a deep and persistent element
in Pringle-Pattison's own thinking. There was in it a
recurrent sense of the more that lies beyond and above
logical formulation, of the horizon that is never enclosed
by the frame of the picture. If only this surrounding
territory, as yet so little entered upon, could be patiently
explored by thinkers each of whom sought steadily to
appreciate points of view divergent from his own, the
hope of a large measure of ultimate agreement indicated
in the letter quoted from Leslie Stephen (above, p. 80 f.)
might at last be realised.

This recollection of Pringle-Pattison's teaching is
especially associated with the day, or days, in the
Honours class when he touched on the final relation of
the ethical and the religious experience — of the contrast
between the Good as in partial and painful process of
achievement, and the Good as already achieved and
waiting to be appropriated by the finite spirit. Here
his teaching had much in common with that of F. H.
Bradley.2 He attempted no formal reconciliation ; but
no student who carefully followed his thought could fail
to realise how real and essential both points of view
were to himself, and how fully he believed that they
would be found at one in some form of experience wider
in its span than ours, and were indeed implicitly at one
in the highest reaches of our present experience.

Two impressions of his teaching may here be added
which were placed on record by men who studied under

1 Marius the Epicurean, Ch. xvi., " Second Thoughts." If my
memory is not at fault, Pringle-Pattison linked with this Ch. ix.,
" New Cyrenaicism."

2 Cf. the concluding chapter of Ethical Studies, especially pp. 319,
329 (2nd ed.), with Seth's early statement quoted p. 32 above, and
with The Idea of God, p. 396, written more than thirty years after.

MEMOIR 101

Pringle-Pattison, one at the beginning and the other
during the later part of his Edinburgh professorship.
Professor H. R. Mackintosh, writing in the Scotsman on
the day after his death, thus described his Honours
class : " That famous higher course, some of us readily
own, was the best lecturing we have ever heard. He
spoke conversationally, at times with a hesitation that
added piquancy to the thing said, and he used no stale
words. His method was to develop his own view by
way of exposition and criticism of the greater thinkers,
the criticism being of that higher order which forces
an author to review himself in the light of his own
assumptions/'

Professor H. F. Hallett has thus recorded his impres
sion of Pringle-Pattison 's teaching at a later time : "He
possessed in the highest degree the power of going straight
to the heart of an abstruse problem. There was never a
clearer-headed university professor, yet his ability was not
overwhelming to his students. The slight hesitancy of
his manner, the complete absence of the learned volubility
that often conceals ' learned ignorance/ put the young
student at ease with his subject, if not altogether at
ease with his professor. . . . Further, he was a great
teacher of philosophers : there must be at least half a
dozen professors of philosophy at present in the univer
sities of Great Britain alone who owe their first initiation
as philosophers to Pringle-Pattison ; but I should say
that no two of them belong to the same school of thought.
They were not so taught/' x To which it may be added
that his pupils have held chairs of philosophy not only
in Great Britain, but in India, Canada, Australia, South
Africa and the United States ; and that many of those
who have become theological teachers have shown his

1 Professor Hallett allows me to quote, here and later, from the
appreciation which he contributed to Mind, N.S., No. 166 (April
!933)> PP- 137 ff-

102 MEMOIR

influence hardly less than the philosophers. Witness
such a book as Professor John Baillie's The Interpretation
of Religion.1

Before we leave the " old Logic Classroom," there is
one memory which students of the years before 1905 or
thereabouts will readily recall. On the closing day of
the winter session Professor Campbell Fraser used to
come in from his beautiful home at Gorton, between
Hawthornden and Roslin, to present the medals in the
Logic class and to wish its parting members well as
they passed on to another stage of philosophy or of life.
He and Pringle-Pattison, either of whom might have
sat for the portrait of the ideal philosopher, were more
than ordinarily impressive when they were seen together,
the one with snow-white, the other with silver, hair and
flowing beard. If there was more of command in the
features of the older man, the younger had the greater
benignity.

Both before and after graduation, Pringle-Pattison's
students found him, as they found his brother, ready to
take endless trouble to advise regarding lines of study
or research. This eagerness to help and unconsciousness
of the dignity of his own office found an outlet in a
small trait which many will remember during talks in
his study. When a book was mentioned, instead of
merely characterising it he would rise from his chair,
search for it in his bookshelves and place it in the hands
of his companion, until the latter, embarrassed by the
mounting pile of volumes at his elbow and ashamed to
find the philosopher thus persistently fetching and carry
ing for a quite undistinguished guest, would register a re
solve to mention no more books for that evening at least.

1 Dr Baillie now holds a chair in Union Theological Seminary,
New York. Cf. also an appreciation of Pringle-Pattison's life and
work in the Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy for
December 1931, by Principal E. N. Merrington of Knox College,
Dunedin, who was a post-graduate student of philosophy in Edinburgh.

MEMOIR 103

Pringle-Pattison the man has been portrayed by
Professor Hallett from an angle all the more significant
that it would not so readily have been chosen by a
compatriot : " Andrew Seth was essentially an Edin
burgh man, by birth, by training, by residence for the
greater part of his life, and it may also be said by tem
perament and native bias. To one at least of his students,
coming to the Scottish metropolis from over the Border,
he seemed the very incarnation of the spirit of Edinburgh.
His broad and easy culture, scholarly reserve, and intel
lectual piety, with not a little of the scepticism of mental
attitude and distaste for enthusiasm associated with
that other great Edinburgh philosopher whose monu
ment adorns the Calton Hill, found an ideal setting in the
austere beauty of the city of castle and college, palace
and kirk/'

University administration did not in itself appeal
strongly to Pringle-Pattison's temperament or interest,
but, in this sphere as in others, what he undertook he
carried out conscientiously and with thoroughness. Sir
Richard Lodge, who was for long his colleague as Pro
fessor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, has
contributed the following note on his work in the Senatus,
and also for several years in the University Court :
" There were three topics in which he took special
interest. He sought to maintain for the philosophical
subjects their time-honoured place in the Arts curriculum.
He opposed, with what seemed to me curious tenacity,
all encroachments on the sanctity of the vacations.
And he was a consistent champion of the modern lan
guages against the active protagonist on the other side,
Henry Butcher. This was, so far as I remember, the
only matter on which he appeared as the leader of a
party. His usual attitude was that of a neutral and
rather aloof critic. He certainly never desired or claimed
to be an academic reformer, and he viewed with some

104 MEMOIR

distrust the excessive loosening of the curriculum.
When he took part in debate, he spoke with force and
dignity, and he was always listened to with respect."

Regarding the revision of the Arts curriculum, there
are many who now hold that Pringle-Pattison's attitude
of caution was justified, and that at this period its
balance and its cultural value were jeopardised by the
indefinite extension of ' options/ many of which were
imperfectly co-ordinated. In November 1908 he wrote
to Professor Alexander : " We are kept uncomfortably
busy here working out the arrangements for new curricula
under the far more elastic conditions of our new Ordi
nance. Psychology, now in the hands of W. G. Smith,
will be a central subject for the teachers who constitute
about seven-tenths of our total numbers in Arts, but it
has yet to be seen how the almost complete freedom
introduced will affect the study of philosophy proper."

During the years covered by this chapter more than
one additional honour came to Pringle-Pattison. The
degree of LL.D., which St Andrews and Princeton had
already conferred, was followed in 1902 by that of D.C.L.
from the University of Durham ; and two years later
he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

One matter in which Pringle-Pattison's philosophical
record and sound judgment inevitably gave him a leading
voice was the appointment of Gifford Lecturers in the
University. In the years covered by this chapter there
were four courses of Gifford Lectures which gave him
especial satisfaction : those by William James, Laurie,
Bosanquet and Bergson. Of these, the first and last
involved him in a good deal of work and responsibility.
William James* appointment was made about two years
after he and Seth first met at the Princeton celebrations
in 1896. But in the end of 1898 James had a serious
breakdown, and the following autumn, when he was in
Europe seeking health, a grave degree of heart weakness

MEMOIR 105

showed itself. This made it necessary to postpone the
Lectures twice ; and they were finally delivered in the
Summer Terms of 1901 and 1902, though even in the
latter year the great psychologist was forced to lecture
seated. During the trying period of uncertainty, both
Professor and Mrs James acknowledged with the sin-
cerest gratitude the consideration and helpfulness which
their friend showed in arranging for these postponements.
In October 1899 Mrs James wrote from Nauheim : " You
have been so very kind that I find myself turning grate
fully to you as one of the beneficent influences in a very
hard year. A wife's judgment of her husband's work
must be taken sceptically, but I hope to appeal to your
own a few months hence to confirm it, for William has
never done anything better than these lectures. He
has grown so wise in all these weary months of illness."
Two months later James himself wrote : " I am applying
for a second year of furlough from Harvard, and between
me and eternity there is nothing to look at except
Gifford Lectures, the subject of which fascinates me
more and more."

When, after these delays, the lectures on The Varieties
of Religious Experience were at last given to the world,
many others felt the fascination of the subject ; and
not least Pringle-Pattison, whose range of sympathy
was wider than that of some fellow idealists. He had
long valued and used freely in teaching psychology
William James' pioneer work in that field; and he
welcomed also his Gifford Lectures with their fresh and
stimulating treatment of the religious life.

An attempt was made with the co-operation of Dr
Edward Caird, then Master of Balliol, to secure Mr F. H.
Bradley as Edinburgh's next Gifford Lecturer. Mr
Bradley 's health prevented his accepting nomination ;
but eight or nine years later Dr Bernard Bosanquet
accepted the appointment. He wrote to Pringle-Pattison

io6 MEMOIR

expressing his appreciation of the fact that he had
been nominated, and that the initiative had been taken
by one whose views had often diverged from his own.
In spite of this divergence regarding the relation of finite
personality to the Absolute, no one who had the privilege
of seeing them together at this time could fail to realise
that they were men of essentially kindred spirit . Between
them controversy left no bitterness.

Following Dr Bosanquet's tenure of the Gifford
Lectureship came the appointment which caused wider
interest — one might truthfully say, excitement — than
any other, that of M. Bergson. His name was then on
all lips, and his views were being expounded in all
degrees of dilution in popular no less than scientific and
philosophical journals. The invitation to deliver the
Gifford Lectures was sent towards the end of 1911 ; and
M. Bergson wrote at once to the Secretary of the Univer
sity, Sir Ludovic Grant, accepting the appointment, and
at the same time expressed to Pringle-Pattison the
pleasure which he felt in the prospect of meeting one
whose works he had known for long.

Although M. Bergson was a brilliant linguist as well
as thinker, there were questions of some difficulty to
determine regarding the language in which the lectures
were to be given. The first suggestion from the side of
the University was that the majority should be in
English ; but this raised a difficulty for M. Bergson,
whose method it was to lecture ex tempore and after
wards write what he had spoken. Finally, it was
decided that the lectures should be in French — save two,
which were read by the lecturer in English. In these
and other arrangements Pringle-Pattison took an active
and characteristically helpful part.

In the summer of 1913 he and his wife and children
visited the Rhine and Switzerland. For a time they
were a united party, and after two of the elder children

MEMOIR 107

had to return home, the others went on to the Oberland,
Zermatt and Chamonix. When on his way home,
Pringle-Pattison had the interest of spending an evening
in M. Bergson's home at Auteuil. Six months later
M. Bergson reached Edinburgh. He had been asked to
send in advance a synopsis of his earlier lectures to be
translated and issued at the opening of the course ; and
when the proof reached him he wrote to Pringle-Pattison :
" II est si parfaitement traduit oue je vous soup£onne
d'etre 1'auteur de la traduction. Je serais vraiment
confus de vous avoir donne cette peine."

The course was delivered in the Natural History
Classroom, the largest in the University, and was closely
followed by the most varied as well as the largest audience
which had ever assembled to hear a series of philosophical
lectures in Edinburgh. The subject was " The Problem
of Personality/' and not only the material of the lectures
but the personality of the lecturer made a strong appeal
—the spare figure, intellectual face with eyes of unusual
brilliance, animation of manner, lightness of touch, all
combined with the marvellously clear French style to
form a unique impression. On one occasion M. Bergson
dined with Lord Haldane and others at 16 Churchhill ;
and on another he agreed to meet the members of the
University Philosophical Society in an informal discus
sion at the house of James Seth — a discussion of which
Pringle-Pattison left a short record.1 From every point
of view M. Bergson's visit was a memorable one for
those interested in philosophy in Edinburgh ; and a
somewhat melancholy interest now attaches to a letter
dated from the University Club on May 16, in which he
thanked Pringle-Pattison and his wife for their friendly
welcome, and provisionally fixed May 10, 1915, for the
first lecture of the second course. In this M. Bergson
had promised to pass on from psychology, to which his
1 The Idea of God, p. 380 n.

io8 MEMOIR

contribution was well known, and to break new ground
in the application of his leading ideas to the central
problems of ethics and religion. But the strain of the
war, during which he undertook much heavy work at
the instance of the French Government, left his health
so impaired that the first course was never published nor
the second delivered.

This account of the sixteen years before 1914 may
draw to a close with some account of Pringle-Pattison' s
continued friendship with three men whose names have
been often before us — Professor Campbell Fraser,
Mr Balfour and Lord Haldane. In September 1899,
when Professor Campbell Fraser reached his eightieth
birthday, Pringle-Pattison wrote : " It is given to few
to look back in the unimpaired vigour of all their powers
upon eighty years of a life so full of honour and useful
ness as yours has been. Health and happiness have also
been yours. Deep delight in nature, unfailing interest
in history and in the general movement of the world
have contributed to make life rich and full. I have
often thought within the last ten years that, besides
what we owe to your philosophical teaching, you give
in your own person a notable example of -how good a
thing human life can be or can be made." The reply
contained these words : "I am too conscious that the
ideal which your words suggest has not been realised
by me, but the fact that you suppose this must make
me more earnest in the endeavour to realise it during
the days which may remain for me in this passing
world."

Seven years later it fell to Pringle-Pattison to organise
a meeting in celebration of the jubilee of Campbell
Fraser's appointment as successor to Sir William Hamil
ton ; and three years later still he joined with Lord
Rosebery, Mr Balfour and many of the old philosopher's

MEMOIR 109

former students in an address of congratulation on his
ninetieth birthday. To this Campbell Fraser replied in
a letter which ended : —

" To me the retrospect awakens a deep sense of work
left undone which ought to have been done — oppor
tunities lost which God has given to me. — With grateful
regard to all my too indulgent friends, Ever affectionately
yours, A. CAMPBELL FRASER."

One more letter reached Pringle-Pattison in the autumn
of 1910, in which Campbell Fraser said : " I have been
confined to bed for the last few days, but am now
emerging. This is due, they say, to a week of (for me)
pretty heavy work in revising my ' Selections from
Berkeley ' for a sixth edition at the urgent request of the
Clarendon Press." Regarding this, the last philosophical
task of his long life, which ended four years later,
Professor James Seth told the writer that, having gone
over the proof-sheets at Professor Campbell Fraser 's
request, he found that all the alterations made by the
unwearied old man gave added clarity and point to what
he had written long before.

In January 1899 Pringle-Pattison wrote to Mr Balfour :
" I have just been reading Wilfrid Ward's paper for the
next meeting of the Synthetic. . . . The paper is very
nicely worked out till the Church (for which we have all
been waiting) suddenly steps out on the last page. I
fear the analogy between scientific authority and
authority in religion will not hold. We accept scientific
authority simply to save ourselves the trouble of verify
ing the conclusions for ourselves — or the trouble of
educating ourselves till we are able to test it all. This
is purely provisional and a matter of personal con
venience. Whereas the religious authority is supposed
to deal with matters which reason is incompetent to

no MEMOIR

settle, and accordingly puts forward claims to permanent
submission. Again, so far as a ' revelation ' is a revela
tion of spiritual truth, I do not see that it needs any
authority behind it. Its authority lies in its own content.
It appeals to the spiritual nature of man, and the response
it evokes is its verification. Spiritual truth is judged by
the spiritual nature of man just as intellectual truth by
his intellectual nature, and neither in the one case nor
in the other is there ultimately a place for external
revelation or external authority. The only Church
Catholic is —

The human soul of universal earth
Dreaming on things to come."

Two years later Mr Balfour told Pringle-Pattison that
he had in mind to write a new preface to the cheap
edition of The Foundations of Belief, which appeared
that year, and added : "I hope you will allow me to
send you a copy of this in proof. Now that Henry
Sidgwick is gone, you are the only philosopher to whom
I should care to show it." A few months later he wrote
again : " There is no man living whose opinion in
matters philosophical I rate so high as yours, or whose
spirit in dealing with them I more admire."

On August 29, 1904, Pringle-Pattison wrote from The
Haining to thank Mr Balfour for a copy of his Presi
dential Address to the British Association : "I think
I may claim to be an exception to the indifferent world
of whom you speak on p. 20, for the idealistic and
teleological argument which you suggest in the con
cluding pages seemed to me in The Foundations of Belief
a constructive position of the most important kind. But
I am afraid it is the force with which you develop the
sceptical implications of natural selection and the rest
of the evolutionary creed that obscures in the mind of

MEMOIR in

most readers the constructive sequel — which so many
critics of your book insisted on taking as an inconsequent
afterthought rather than an integral part of the total
argument."

In November 1902 R. B. Haldane wrote to Pringle-
Pattison regarding the second edition of Man's Place in
the Cosmos, and especially the essay on Bradley 's Appear
ance and Reality, which was there reprinted : " I felt
myself away from Hegelianism and Personality, but
very close to your conclusions here. I think it is the
most powerful thing you have written, and one of the
best essays on the speculative standpoint, in any lan
guage, of our time. I wish you could find time to write
a book, not on Hegel, but on Hegelianism, in detail.
No one alive could do the work as you could. I refer
specially to the limits of the doctrine of Degrees of
Reality — the key, to my mind, of the whole matter.

" I am glad that you have quoted Das Gottliche in the
beginning. It embodies a power of wisdom."

A few weeks later Pringle-Pattison wrote regarding
the first series of Haldane 's Gifford Lectures in St
Andrews, entitled The Pathway to Reality :—

" I must not delay any longer sending you a few lines
of thanks for your Gifford Lectures, not only for the
gift of the volume, but for the contents. Of the sound
ness and importance of the doctrine you know already
that I am well convinced, but I am greatly charmed
with your manner of presenting it. There is a personal
flavour all through the book which gives it a character
of its own. This, I think, will be generally felt, but to
me there is the added flavour of reminiscence wafted
from its pages every now and then. I think you have
been most happily inspired, and I hope you will follow
the same method of large free utterance in your second
course. . . .

" What distressing news this is of Ritchie's death. By

H2 MEMOIR

a strange coincidence it is the very week, and day of the
week, when Adamson died with almost equal sudden
ness last year/'

Both at this time and a year later, when the second
volume of The Pathway to Reality appeared, Pringle-
Pattison reviewed his friend's work in the Times ; and
on the latter occasion Haldane wrote : " With the
hand of a master you have set out the very pith and
kernel of these Gifford Lectures in to-day's Times. I
am more grateful to you than I can easily say, for what
I wanted most badly was to get before busy people the
real point of what we have to say in common to them.
There it is in two columns — as I could not have done it
myself." During the same month (April 1904) Pringle-
Pattison received the following, and pencilled on it,
" Note this letter " :-

' Your letter gave me very great pleasure. For there
is no one whose judgment I set alongside of yours, and
we have worked side by side, so to speak, at these prob
lems, and are now near the same result. Like you, I
would not foreclose the personal continuance, simply
because to do so is to set up the other side of the antinomy.
Despite his faulty scheme, Kant was not far from the
root of the matter when he sought to call in an Intelligible
World to redress the balance of this empirical world.
But as you say, there are ' substantial interests which
yield a present satisfaction/ and so give us the same
thing in another form.

" I think there is large region, pretty well untrodden,
to be investigated. It has to be shown in detail how
the ends which shape the modes of thinking in spirit,
which though free is finite, determine the aspects of the
world. Something towards this has been done in the
sphere of Logic by Bradley and Bosanquet. But I feel
that they have only got to the verge of the ground. I

MEMOIR 113

know no one else who could do the hard thinking the
work requires as }~ou could, and I hope you will. I
doubt whether there is very much more to be extracted
from Hegel. We want more systematic treatment of
detail. However, I think I shall read over again the
Phcenomenologie, starting from this basis : ' Taking
myself as just the realisation of this particular purpose,
a meaning of Absolute Mind, how do I work out beyond
it? '

" I hope we may manage to have a long talk before a
great interval has passed. With much gratitude, Yours
ever, R. B. HALDANE."

In their political as well as philosophical views the
two men had drawn nearer. In the years after 1906
the Irish question was for a time in abeyance, and
Pringle-Pattison was in full sympathy with the social
policy of the Cabinet of which his friend was a member.
When he wrote to congratulate Haldane on his renewed
return for East Lothian in January 1910, the latter
replied : ' The old and great Parliament is gone, and
the task in this new one is a task which will be very
difficult indeed. It is to me a very great satisfaction to
feel that you are so keenly with us — I feel it like a moral
judgment in our favour."

On February 3, 1913, six months before Lord Haldane's
' lightning visit ' to Montreal to address the American
and Canadian Bar Associations, Pringle-Pattison wrote : —

" MY DEAR HALDANE, — Many thanks for remembering,
in the midst of all you have to do, to send me your
Bristol address. It is extraordinarily wise and sane,
and there is a serenity of optimism about it which is
very comforting because one feels it comes from breadth
of view and is born not of indolence but of a spirit girt
up for strenuous endeavour. I feel too that the civic

H

114 MEMOIR

university is one of the most encouraging features of
our time, and that we in the Scotch Universities have to
learn from the spirit of these newer institutions.

"I see your visit to Canada is now publicly an
nounced. If anything comes in my way which might
be of use in your address, I will not fail to report it. —
Yours always, A. S. PRINGLE-PATTISON."

CHAPTER IX.

GIFFORD LECTURES ON THEISM.

1912-1917.

FOR twelve years after Pringle-Pattison's succession to
The Haining he wrote comparatively little. As years
went on his eyesight troubled him more, and at times of
pressure his younger daughter used to read examination
papers aloud to relieve the strain on his eyes. The long
summer vacation, formerly free for original work, was
now largely taken up by other and hardly less absorbing
duties. But in 1907 a volume entitled The Philosophical
Radicals appeared. Along with reprints of earlier
writings it contained articles based on Leslie Stephen's
English Utilitarians, Benjamin Kidd's Western Civilisa
tion, Herbert Spencer's Autobiography and the Life of
James Martineau. The first two essays showed with
how firm a step the author moved in the field of social
ethics ; and the essay on Martineau drew forth a letter
of warm appreciation from a distinguished thinker with
whom he had much in common, M. Emile Boutroux.
One sentence may be quoted here, since a French
appreciation of style has a quite distinctive value :
" D'un bout a 1'autre la clarte, la nettete, la precision
scientifique de votre exposition rendent la lecture aussi
attachante que fructueuse." Along with numerous
reviews, and the introduction to the volume of Carlyle's

n6 MEMOIR

essays referred to in the first chapter of this Memoir,
The Philosophical Radicals represents the literary harvest
of the decade ending in 1910.

During these years Pringle-Pattison's pupils and
friends continued to hope for a philosophical work on a
larger scale than he had yet attempted ; and various
friends, including Balfour and Haldane, urged him to
set his hand to the task. But, as in the case of other
noted thinkers, including the two philosopher-statesmen
themselves, it was his appointment as Gifford Lecturer
which caused the final crystallisation of ideas long
present to his mind and previously expressed in less
systematic form. When Mr Balfour heard of his friend's
appointment to lecture in the University of Aberdeen,
he wrote : "I have long wished to see you Gifford
Lecturer ; and am delighted to hear that the obstacles
which at one time rendered your appointment difficult
have been swept away. After all, you are the man in all
Britain most qualified for the post/*

During the two years which elapsed between the
appointment in April 1910 and the delivery of the first
course in the Summer Term of 1912, Pringle-Pattison
worked hard at the Lectures. It was fortunate that he
had by this time withdrawn from the University Court,
and that the changes indicated in the last chapter had
somewhat reduced the work of his chair ; yet one so
conscientious as he could not treat its duties lightly,
even for a time, and his family were conscious that he
was living under a heavy strain.

But if the preparation of the Lectures was arduous,
the warm welcome which he received in Aberdeen made
their delivery pleasant. He was glad to renew an old
friendship of school and college days with Principal
Sir George Adam Smith ; and they shared a memory
even older than that of the Royal High School. Nearly
fifty years before the Gifford Lecturer went to Aberdeen,

MEMOIR 117

four small boys, George and Dunlop Smith, Andrew
and James Seth, sat near to one another on Sundays
in the New North Church in Edinburgh,1 and the Smiths,
who suffered from an excess of animal spirits which
made sitting still in church doubly difficult, looked on
the Seths as almost too well-behaved for an imperfect
world. Sir George Adam Smith had left his chair of
Old Testament Language and Literature in Glasgow
three years before Pringle-Pattison gave his first course ;
and he afterwards told a friend how great a refreshment
of spirit it had been to escape for a time from the details
of university business into the atmosphere of strenuous
thinking and high idealism which pervaded these Lectures.

Pringle-Pattison's judgment of his own work was
always stringent, not less as regards form than matter ;
and the Lectures were not only revised but in parts
recast before publication. This process occupied many
months, and was extended by the preoccupations and
anxieties of the war. In June 1916 the manuscript was
finally in the hands of the Oxford University Press. In
the interval, on November 28, 1915, Pringle-Pattison
wrote to Lord Haldane :—

" I have read your paper with the greatest interest.
You have swept a great deal into your net besides the
New Realism, and the discussion seems to me throughout
most valuable. What you say about Bergson exactly
represents my own feeling : any amount of stimulus,
but impossible to put the system together, and useless
to appeal to intuition unless one takes intuition as
equivalent to the larger reason.

" I agree also that Idealism must be broadened suffi
ciently to include within itself what is sound in the
Realist contention, and as you say, Bosanquet has
stated the case about as well as it can be stated in his

1 The second in the quartette was the late Sir James Dunlop Smith,
K. C.S.I., a distinguished soldier and administrator in India.

n8 MEMOIR

criticism of Alexander. I think the Realists are right
as against ' the Berkeleian fallacy/ or what they call
'the ego -centric predicament/ And their argument
applies to Green no less than to Berkeley. In both
cases I think we only arrive at a formal Ego, and really
nothing is gained by such a point of subjectivity. But
however much of a Realist one may be epistemologic-
ally, when it is a question of the individual knower, I
still hold, ultimately or metaphysically, to what you
call ' the over-reaching subject-object relationship/ It
is, as you say, simply impossible to take the relation of
compresence in time and space as final.

" I have tried in one of my Gifford Lectures x to dis
engage Idealism from Mentalism, but I fancy I shall
have to add a further note in the present state of the
controversy/'

The Preface to the volume was dated December 20,
1916, and a few weeks later it appeared with the full
title, The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy.
The last words indicated that, as he explicitly stated in
the Preface, the author linked his own thought closely
with the current thought of his time, and followed, as
he had always done, the method of " construction through
criticism/' He added : " I do not claim that it is the
best method ; I simply desire that its nature be recog
nised/' In expressing his thanks to the Senatus of the
University of Aberdeen for his appointment to the
Lectureship, he said : "It has enabled me to bring
together the reflections of many years, and I have
striven, in return, to give them of my best."

Even amid the stress of the third year of war — perhaps,
in the case of some readers, all the more because of this
stress — the book received an immediate welcome. It
was widely recognised that the writer had indeed " given
of his best." His own feeling in regard to it was ex-
1 Lecture X. : The Idea of God, pp* 190 if.

MEMOIR 119

pressed in a letter to Professor A. M. Stalker on April 29,
1917 :—

" I just want to acknowledge the pleasure your letter
gave me. It was no small achievement to read a set of
Gifford Lectures through in these days, and therefore
also no small compliment. I am so glad you felt them
' human ' throughout, for indeed I put a good deal of
myself into them at places and I wanted to state results
broadly.

"It is a satisfaction to me to have brought things
together to the extent I have done, and I am content
to leave the matter so. I get some spontaneous letters
which gratify me, but the press notices so far, though
generally complimentary enough, have been disappoint
ing — i.e., they would be disappointing, if one attached
much importance to them/'

Two months later he wrote to Professor J. H. Muir-
head, a brother of the companion of his student days in
Germany : —

" It was a great pleasure to me, and a sincere satis
faction, to receive your spontaneous letter about my
book. After taking pains with a book there is a certain
hunger in an author to know what appeal it makes to
other minds, and that hunger is ill fed by perfunctory
reviews in the daily and weekly press. So it was a good
deed to write as you did.

" You praise the volume too generously, but I am
so glad to find you approve of the method I have fol
lowed and that you are in agreement with my main
contentions. From some of your recent writing I felt
confident you would be, as you say, in sympathy with
the criticism of Bosanquet's treatment of self-hood,
which is, in a way, the centre of my second series of
lectures. Bosanquet appears to me at times to suffer
from a negative bias, or at least a negative form of
expression, due, I think, partly to revulsion from an

120 MEMOIR

orthodoxy thrust upon him in his youth. I certainly
think it is important to present Idealism in a more
human-hearted fashion, and you encourage me to think
I have now succeeded in doing so without relapsing into
a pluralism of ' impervious ' individuals/'

To Lord Haldane he wrote in March 1917 : " I am
greatly cheered to know that you feel yourself so much
in sympathy with my book and its conclusions. You
would recognise, I daresay, in some of the last pages of
all, the echo of some of our conversations at Cloan in
the early days of 1915 — the passage from Hegel, the
reference to Faust, &c." Six months later he wrote
further : ' That you should go back to my book so
often and not be disappointed is indeed high praise, and
I value it accordingly — though I am well aware that
you must often piece out my presentation from your
own store, and, of course, no one knows so well as an
author the lacunce in his own treatment. Still you
greatly encourage me, and I am grateful for your good
offices in bringing the book to the notice of eminent
persons. The Archibshop's letter (and what you report
of him) is most interesting, and I am glad to be allowed
to keep it.1

" I am glad to infer from the Archbishop's letter that
your ' dear and honoured mother/ as he most truly
calls her, is still enjoying her beautiful old age. Please
— as opportunity offers — remember me to her warmly
and reverentially/'

While it is needless, and would perhaps be inappro
priate, to attempt either a summary or an estimate
here of this book, which contains Pringle-Pattison's
fullest treatment of those problems of epistemology and
ontology which had occupied him for forty years, it
may be well to indicate how his thought had moved in

1 The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Randall Davidson) had been
with Lord Haldane at Cloan a few days before.

MEMOIR 121

the later portion of that time. Those passages, especially
Lectures VI. and VIII. , in which he returns after a long
interval to the Theory of Knowledge, show that he
remained firmly convinced of the truth which he had
all along emphasised, that knowledge is not something
interposed between the mind and reality, nor does it
inevitably distort that which it professes to transmit.
Just as he denied in his first lecture at Princeton that
the " knowing subject stands outside the real universe
altogether," or " comes to inspect it from afar with
mental spectacles of a foreign make," so he now denies
that Mind is " condemned to circle round the circum
ference of the real world, put off with outside shows,
and unable to penetrate to its essential core " (p. 132).
The letter to Lord Haldane, written in 1915 and already
quoted, shows in what sense he had been, and still
remained, a Realist.1

But in regard to the great ontological problems,
especially that of the relation of the man's finite person
ality to the Whole in which it is set, there was certainly
a change between his attitude in Hegelianism and Person
ality or even the Two Lectures on Theism and his treat
ment of the same issues in The Idea of God. It was a
change of emphasis, not of fundamental principle ; but
it was sufficiently real to bring him back into contact
with those early fellow-workers in the Hegelian move
ment who still survived. Nor can one feel sure that, if
William James had lived to read the Gifford Lectures,
he would have said, as he said to Dr Merrington : " I
claim Pringle-Pattison as on my side/' 2 In what, then,
did this change consist ? Not in any weakening of his
conviction as to the central significance of human per
sonality, or the true witness borne by the highest values

1 Cf. Professor Hallett's comments in Mind, April 1933, p. 144.

2 See the article already referred to in the Australasian Journal of
Psychology and Philosophy.

122 MEMOIR

in our experience to the innermost nature of Reality.
His view regarding Human personality was restated at
length as against Bosanquet's position, and he never
wrote with a graver eloquence than in such passages as
that which ends : <c Beauty and goodness are not born
of the clash of atoms ; they are effluences of something
more perfect and more divine." 1

But the distinctive greatness of man's spiritual ex
perience is now interpreted less as a stoical opposition
to the material forces encompassing him, and more as
a relation of harmony with nature and a fulfilment of
what is imperfect in sub-moral life. There is, indeed, a
striking passage on the second last page of the book
in which the writer speaks of nature as "an element,
savage and dangerous, into which the human being is
thrown to show what stuff he is made of — an element
testing with merciless severity his powers of courage
and endurance, but drawing from him thereby the
utmost of which he is capable." But the main emphasis
is on man as the interpreter of nature, and human life
as the consummation, thus far, of a process which,
without the light thrown backwards along it by our
spiritual experience, would have been dark and mean
ingless. The idea of " Man as organic to the World,"
the title of the Sixth Lecture, runs through the book,
and continuity rather than conflict is its key-thought.
To express the change in different terms, it is a move
ment from the ethicism of Kant and Fichte to the
larger humanist view which represents one meaning of
the adjective, ' Hegelian/ In this later period Pringle-
Pattison would hardly have repeated his words at
Princeton : " It is in the will, in purposive action,
and particularly in our moral activity, as Fichte,
to my mind, conclusively demonstrated, that we lay
1 P. 42 ; cf. pp. 236 fi.

MEMOIR 123

hold upon reality." Or rather, if he had repeated
them, it would have been with some addition, softening
their exclusiveness and extending their range. Thus in
one of the later lectures he speaks of " the divine idea
of a ' mind and life ' " as " the very life itself, experi
enced as significant because experienced as a whole,
and what is more, as part of the meaning of the all-
inclusive whole." *

The words last quoted occur in the lecture on " Time
and Eternity." Here, as in certain other passages, the
author broke definitely new ground. He argued that
" the eternal view of a time process " is the view of its
stages " as elements or members of a completed pur
pose." In following this out he used the analogy of a
tragedy or a symphony. To some whom he taught this
may suggest the regret that he never approached, save
incidentally, the problems of ^Esthetic. If he had dealt
with these deliberately and on a large scale, his apprecia
tion of music, poetry and natural beauty, and his finely
developed sense of form, might well have resulted in a
contribution of unique value to a branch of thought
with which British philosophy has been but little
engaged.

But this crowning volume of Pringle-Pattison's career,
together with the later Gifford Lectures of which an
account has still to be given, covers so large a field and
contains so much of high philosophical and religious value
that it savours of ingratitude to reflect on further regions
which the author might under other circumstances have
explored. The Idea of God stands out with two other
series of Gifford Lectures delivered within the same
years (1907-1915) : Professor James Ward's Realm of
Ends and Professor Sorley's Moral Values and the Idea
of God. Though differing in treatment and at times in

1 Two Lectures on Theism, p. 46 ; The Idea of God, p. 363.

124 MEMOIR

outlook, the three books have a solid core of agreement.
Together they form an impressive summary of the
theistic argument, as it developed in English and
Scottish thought in answer to the materialism which
sprang from the triumphs of science in the nineteenth
century.

125

CHAPTER X.

THE WAR YEARS.

1914-1918.

THE outbreak of the Great War, which brought so severe
a strain on numberless British families, fell inevitably
with an even greater weight on the few homes which
were as closely linked with Germany as that at The
Haining. For both husband and wife there was a sudden
rending of old and intimate bonds, but happily there
were two facts which helped to make this more bearable
than it would otherwise have been. Mrs Pringle-Pattison
was an only surviving child, and her parents had passed
away years before ; so she had now no family ties with
her native land. More important still, she was at once
and completely convinced of the righteousness of the
Allied cause, and looked and hoped throughout for an
Allied victory. Thus she was entirely at one with her
husband and children in their war-time sympathies and
efforts.

Even before the outbreak of war the family at The
Haining had a twofold military connection. The eldest
daughter, Marjorie, had married Lieutenant (afterwards
Major) Webster, R.A.M.C., and the third son, Siegfried,
was at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, preparing
for a commission in the Cameron Highlanders. When
war broke out the second son, Ernest, who had com
pleted his medical course a few months before, followed

126 MEMOIR

his brother-in-law into the Army Medical Corps. How
the other two sons and, later, a second son-in-law took
their part in war service can best be told by three or
four letters written by Pringle-Pattison at intervals
between 1915 and 1918. These will both give a series,
as it were, of cross-sections through the unceasing and
varied activities of the sons, and will also show the
patient uncomplaining courage of the father, even when
the great blow fell midway through the war, and the
youngest, Ronald, fell on the Somme.

On the first Sunday of the war Pringle-Pattison wrote
from The Haining to A. M. Stalker : ' ' Yes, it is sad to
think of German civilisation going down in a bath of
blood, as it seems bound to do, but, as you say, her
spiritual heritage will remain and perhaps shine out
more clearly. It is the German hegemony of the Prussian
military caste that must go. I have been thinking of
Carlyle's welcome to this same German hegemony in
1870, but it has not been good for Europe. The old
Germany we knew gave place to the Bismarckian gospel
of force and vae victis (as they have already begun to
cry in Germany before realising who the conquered
were likely to be). I did not believe in the inevitable-
ness of this war, but now I believe. I think it will be a
changed Europe that we shall see when it is all over.

" Do you remember the constant prophecies and
speculations of the old Spectator about what would
happen when the Austrian Emperor died ? Will the
old man live to see the final dismemberment of his
kingdoms ? "

During the spring of 1915 Pringle-Pattison watched
with growing indignation the campaign of calumny
and innuendo against Lord Haldane which finally ex
cluded him from office. Four years earlier he had
written when his friend went to the House of Lords :
" I have been much gratified, as all your friends must

MEMOIR 127

be, to see how frank and universal has been the tribute
to your work as War Minister even in quarters mostly
given to carping criticism. It seems to me indeed as
if you were in danger of the Biblical woe, when all men
speak well of you ! Permit me to join in the chorus of
congratulations and good wishes. May this turning-
point in your career be only the starting-point for a
fresh period of fruitful activity/'

Now, however, the position was completely reversed,
and Pringle-Pattison wrote on June 7, 1915 :—

" I have had it in mind to write you ever since the
reconstruction of the Government was announced. I
have been very sorry that stupid and malicious clamour
should have made you feel it right to resign an office to
which destiny had led you by a devious path and which
you were so specially fitted to adorn — had, indeed,
already adorned. I have felt keenly the injustice of
it, seeing that it is precisely to you that we owe the
organisation of the expeditionary force on the one hand
and the territorial army on the other, which have made
the successful prosecution of the war possible. Winston
Churchill, I am glad to see, has been saying in Dundee
what all your friends have been thinking.

' The war has had a most extraordinary effect in
unsettling people's judgment. I meet many men and
women, whom I should have thought eminently sober
and reasonable, cherishing almost insane delusions. It
has been a very curious revelation.

" But I am sure you feel that right-thinking people
do you justice, and meanwhile a period of rest from the
intense labours of so many years past may be well, and
the O.M. is, I think, the kind of honour you would most
appreciate."

To this letter Haldane replied that he counted himself
well off, as he was able to throw himself into judicial
work, as well as philosophy and work for education.

128 MEMOIR

He added : " I have more peace and time for meditation
than I have had for long."

At the end of the year Pringle-Pattison sent this
reply from Edinburgh to a letter of Christmas greeting
from W. P. James at Cardiff :—

" It was good to get your friendly inquiry and the
good wishes which the season brings round. It is, indeed,
as you say, with trembling that one writes in these days
to friends from whom one had not heard for a while.

" I am thankful to say that our circle is still intact.
Our third boy was wounded at Loos on September 25,
and had a most marvellous escape. A bullet passed
through his throat, just missing the vital parts. All
those who examined the wound exclaimed at the narrow
ness of the escape. Having missed, it left only a clean
wound which healed nicely. We got him home before
the middle of October, and he had over six weeks' leave
partly at The Haining and partly here, which was a
great joy to us. ... Our eldest son, Norman, was sent
to the Dardanelles in August, but he succumbed to the
maladies of the place in October (enteritis and jaundice),
and was lucky enough to be sent home to convalesce. He
arrived on November 9, and on the next day, a Sunday,
we had the very extraordinary good fortune of having
all our four sons together again under one roof.

" Ernest, the second, who had spent the winter in
Rouen in R.A.M.C. and had afterwards been at the
front attached to a regiment, was invalided home during
the summer, and after two months' leave was put
temporarily on home duty in Ayrshire. Ronald, the
youngest, who left school last summer, went to Sand
hurst in August for the four or five months' training
they now give officers."

The letter goes on to tell of the marriage during the
previous June of Norman Pringle-Pattison to Doris
Tweedie, and the presence at 16 Churchhill of Marjorie

MEMOIR 129

(Mrs Webster) with her baby boy, and continues : " My
younger daughter's fiance has been fighting with the
ist Royal Scots near Ypres and elsewhere since March,
and when his regiment was ordered to the East lately
and he could not get leave, my daughter accompanied
his mother to Marseilles to see him before he went—
rather an adventure in these days. They were rewarded
by seeing him for two days and a half, but although they
parted on November 27 they have had no word of him
since.

" Well, well, this is almost too much of a domestic
chronicle, but you brought it upon yourself. . . . When
one thinks of the poor Sorleys 1 and so many others
known and unknown, one feels undeservedly happy,
but as the war goes on without any sign of ending, one
feels often strangely old as if one belonged to a bygone
generation. With so many pledges, one is afraid to look
into the future — and yet one hopes."

During these months several letters arrived in M.
Bergson's beautiful handwriting, dealing with the post
ponement of the Gifford Lectures already referred to,
telling of his own work for the Allied cause and his
confidence in ultimate victory, and containing messages
to the family of his friend. One of these ran : " Laissez-
moi vous feliciter, et de tout cceur, d'avour trois fils
sue le front, et un quatrieme sur le point d'y aller.
Laissez-moi aussi vous dire quels vceux je forme pour
qu'ils reviennent sains et saufs."

In May 1916 Pringle-Pattison wrote to Stalker telling
him that Norman was on light duty near Innerleithen ;
Ernest had just returned to France, destination unknown ;
Siegfried had been passing through a strenuous time in
the trenches near Loos ; Ronald was guarding the wire-

1 Charles Hamilton Sorley, author of Marlborough and Other
Poems, who fell at the age of twenty, was the son of Pringle-Pattioon's
old friends, Professor and Mrs W. R. Sorley.

I

130 MEMOIR

less station at Stoneywood, near Aberdeen ; Marjorie
was still at Malta with her husband ; while Clement
Nimmo-Smith, Elinor's fiance, had been " cutting down
trees and scouting on the mountains near Salonika."

So the anxious months dragged on, and the anxiety
became greater in the end of July, when Ronald, aged
just nineteen, went out to join his regiment, the 2nd
Gordon Highlanders, somewhere in the neighbourhood
of Amiens. He had been a keen member of the O.T.C.
at Merchiston Castle, and had twice shot for the Ash-
burton Shield at Bisley. He and his parents had planned
that he should go to Oxford on leaving Merchiston, but,
like so many more, he heard a far sterner call. His fate
was strangely different from that of his brothers, who
went through month after month of heavy fighting ;
for his battalion only went into the line in the last days
of August, and on September 6 he fell in a position
which, according to the testimony of a brother officer,
could only have been reached by one of rare courage.
At first he was posted as missing, but in a very few
days it was known that he had fallen. His brother,
Siegfried, returning home after being again wounded,
brought the final news. For three days after hearing it
at Rouen he carried it with him silently, until his parents
met him in Edinburgh, and he found that they also knew.

When The Idea of God appeared in the early days of
1917 it bore this dedication : —

TO
MY WIFE

AND THE DEAR MEMORY OF

RONALD

OUR YOUNGEST SON

WHO GAVE HIS LIFE WILLINGLY

AT GINCHY ON THE SOMME

6TH SEPTEMBER 1916

MEMOIR 131

A few weeks earlier (October 30, 1916), Pringle-Pattison
wrote to W. P. James : " The enclosed was addressed to
you a long time ago, but I kept it back intending to
accompany it by some more personal words of thanks
for your kind letter and also some details about us.
Unfortunately my eyes have been more than usually
weak and troublesome and have kept me from all but
the unavoidable minimum of writing/' Referring to
Ronald, he went on : " His life was unclouded from
beginning to end, and the end was instantaneous. I
will not enter into our grief. It has been a comfort to
have his brother Siegfried, next to him in age, with us
since we got the news."

After mentioning a visit from Marjorie, who had spent
the summer at home and returned to Malta, the writer
added : " She has left with us her little son of a year
and a half, who is the brightest spot in the house and
very good for us all, especially his grandmother/'

During the months that followed he wrote for his
family and a few close friends an account of Ronald's
short brave life. In June 1917 he wrote to Professor
J. H. Muirhead :-

" I am touched by your feeling reference to the loss
of our dear boy. It still colours our lives, and can
never cease to do so, and alas ! so long as the war goes
on, we are constantly in anxiety about our other sons,
two of whom are now at the front in France. I wish
we met sometimes, but Lewis tells me you are rarely
in Scotland, and I am not often in London or anywhere
in England. My wife and I were in London last week,
however, as our third son was getting his Military Cross
presented."

This sharp personal bereavement was not the only
loss which fell on Pringle-Pattison during the year 1916.
The Principal of the University, Sir William Turner,
who had carried on his duties with rare dignity and

132 MEMOIR

distinction to the age of eighty, passed away ; and,
among other losses in the Senatus, one which touched
him deeply was the passing at a comparatively early
age of William Ross Hardie, the Professor of Latin, a
brilliant scholar and a highly valued colleague.

By this time the war had made many gaps in the
ranks of his former students. Among these there was
none of whose future work in philosophy he cherished
higher hopes than John Handyside. Like himself,
Handyside came up from the Royal High School to
Edinburgh University. After gaining a brilliant First
Class and the Ferguson Scholarship at the age of twenty,
he went on to Balliol, where his career was equally dis
tinguished. From 1907 he worked for four years as
Pringle-Pattison's assistant (for the latter part as
lecturer also), and a like period was spent as Lecturer
in Philosophy in the University of Liverpool. He then
resigned his post in order to take a commission in a
Liverpool regiment, and in October 1916 was mortally
wounded " while gallantly rallying his men in a par
ticularly awkward and desperate situation." Handy-
side had published next to nothing in his lifetime, but
soon after the war Pringle-Pattison compiled a small
volume of his philosophical papers,1 and prefixed to
them a Biographical Note which began : ' The papers
here brought together are all that remains of the work
of one of the acutest and most thoughtful of the younger
generation of philosophical teachers. Their author fell
in the war, being one of those who counted his life a
little thing to give in so great a cause."

In January 1918 he wrote again to W. P. James : " I
am very thankful to say that no further evil has befallen
us during the course of last year. (Did I write to you
at all during its passing ?) Our three sons are alive and
well, all at the present moment in France. They have

1 The Historical Method in Ethics and Other Essays (1919).

MEMOIR 133

all, including the medical one, been in bad fighting on
the Ypres front near Paschendaele, but have come
through safely. Norman, the eldest, was also in the
Cambrai advance — when it was an advance — and saw
the tanks and the cavalry take Cantaing, one of the
hamlets nearest Cambrai itself/'

The letter then tells of the sons-in-law — for Elinor
Pringle-Pattison was now married — one of whom was
in France and the other on military duty at home with
his arm in a sling, and continues : " My resolution is
unimpaired, but as regards the next few months it
seems to me emphatically a case of ' wait and see/ . . .

" W. P. Ker looked in upon us here for an hour about
the New Year. Otherwise we have seen few old friends :
it is so difficult for anyone to get about now. I am
selling wood to the Government and trying to prevent
them taking too much — also ploughing up grass parks "
— anglice, permanent pasture — " for the nation's food,
which is a difficult enough business when one has neither
horses nor labour enough for the task. Still we are
doing something.

" I often think of Dunster and Cornwall — hope we
may meet again in happier times. Brecon would do
very well : with time I daresay I could still get to the
top of the Beacon/'

As the last sentence suggests, the writer had by no
means lost his powers of walking. One day towards
the end of the war he walked with a friend from a point
in Leaderdale, not far from the former home of his
mother's family, over the Lammermuirs to Humbie.
Arriving in the late afternoon, they found that the last
train had gone, and they had to walk six miles farther
to Pencaitland before they could get a horse and trap
to take them to a point from which trains were running
to Edinburgh.

During the German advance in April 1918 another

134 MEMOIR

period of great anxiety occurred, especially on Siegfried's
account. He had been sent from the Camerons to act
as second-in-command in the trenches to the ist Black
Watch, and was for days together in the fierce fighting
near Givenchy. It was a cause of profound thankful
ness to his parents when a note came from him in hospital
at Camiers, and they knew that for the time he was
safe.

This war-time chronicle of loss and anxiety unflinch
ingly borne may end with extracts from two letters after
the Armistice. To Stalker, who had himself lost a son,
Pringle-Pattison wrote on November 16 : " How sud
denly it has all come and how great the victory — a
Weltgericht indeed. One has hardly got used to the feeling
of relief in the mornings when there are no more bulletins
to scan and anxiously awaited letters to look for. I
trust your news has been good up to the last from France
and Salonika and from your airman. We have been
wonderfully spared these last months, for Siegfried is
still with us, doing a nine weeks' staff course in Edin
burgh, and Norman's job has kept him in this country
till now, and Ernest is near Boulogne.

'* The end of the long struggle brings back more keenly
those who have died to secure the victory. I have no
doubt you have been thinking much of Dan this week
as we have been of Ronald. But we can at least rejoice
that they and the whole noble band — so many one
knows — have not died in vain. ... I hope victory
will give the Allies, and especially ourselves, internal
strength to resist Bolshevism in all its varieties, and
make the necessary transformations of society in a
patient and orderly way."

On December 26 he wrote to W. P. James : " The
relief at the ending of the long strain is indeed great—
so great indeed that one has difficulty in realising that

MEMOIR 135

the nightmare is actually at an end. How suddenly it
came too at the last, the end almost as sudden as the
beginning, and what a chaos the world is and is likely
to be for some good time to come. Still I think we have
right in this country to a chastened optimism. 0 passi
graviom, as Virgil encourages us."

136

CHAPTER XL

LATER GIFFORD LECTURES.

1919-1923.

IN the last months of the war the time-table of Pringle-
Pattison's working year had returned to the order with
which in earlier days he had been familiar — a winter
session of steady lecturing, five days a week, and a long
vacation extending from the beginning of April to
October. But his classes were in numbers a mere
shadow of those in former days. With the return of
peace it was certain that there would be a rapid increase
in the number of students, accompanied by much heavy
work in reorganising the department ; so the question
arose whether he should himself enter on this new
period, or leave its responsibilities to a younger man.
At first it was his intention to resign in 1920, when
forty years would have elapsed since he first taught in
the University ; but further thought convinced him
that it would be better to hand over a year earlier the
Chair from which he had taught philosophy with the
highest distinction during twenty-eight years. So his
resignation was intimated to take effect in the summer of
1919. His feelings as he sent it in were expressed in a
letter to Professor Stalker on May 13 : —

" If you look in the Scotsman to-morrow you will
probably see in the Report of the University Court's

MEMOIR 137

proceedings a notice of the fact that I am resigning my
Chair at the close of the present session. It is a step
I have had in contemplation more or less for some years
(I completed my thirty years as a Scotch professor in
1917), and though it naturally involves a wrench and a
certain amount of mental and emotional disturbance,
the longing for freedom has grown very strong, and I
think it is wise in a teacher to go before his natural
strength is altogether abated.

" I thought I should like you to hear this from myself
rather than come across it casually in the newspapers
or hear it from others. It is thirty-nine years this
autumn since I started teaching philosophy here as
Eraser's assistant/'

When his successor was appointed, it was a great
satisfaction to Pringle-Pattison to know that his Chair
was to be filled by a former student of his own in St
Andrews — one who was so fully able to maintain its
fine traditions as Professor Norman Kemp Smith.

The Edinburgh home at 16 Churchhill was still main
tained, and was occupied during the greater part of the
winter, but The Haining now became, even more than
before, the focus of family life. By the autumn of 1919
the sons and daughters had settled down to their various
post-war activities. Ernest, like his elder brother-in-
law, retained his commission in the Royal Army Medical
Corps ; Siegfried, whose mind had been set on a military
career from his school-days at Merchiston Castle, re
mained in the Cameron Highlanders with the rank of
Captain ; while Norman Pringle-Pattison and Clement
Nimmo-Smith resumed legal work as Writers to the
Signet in Edinburgh. In September of this year Pringle-
Pattison enjoyed exploring the Roman wall with his
old friend, A. M. Stalker ; and a few days later, during
the disquiet of the railway strike, a walk took place
from The Haining, the end of which was beautifully

138 MEMOIR

depicted in a letter from W. P. Ker to his friends the
MacCunns : " We ended September 30 with a walk at
sunset, and later, over from the Tweed near Ashestiel —
A. S. P. -P. and me. It was dark before we got off the
hill — I am gloating still — it was like the happy days of
childhood in a story : coming down in darkness and
hearing burns running, and steering by the light thrown
up from waters, and lights of Selkirk town on its hill
across the water."

Pringle-Pattison's first publication after the war took
him on to unwonted, though not unfamiliar, ground. It
was a pamphlet entitled The Duty of Candour in Religious
Teaching, and contained an address delivered in October
1920 as President of the Theological Society of New
College, Edinburgh.1 He was not the first layman to be
asked to act in this capacity, for Lord Haldane had
done so some years earlier ; and he had many links with
the college. His brother, James, had studied there, as
had many of his own most distinguished students ; and
the Principal, Dr Alexander Martin, had been a friend
since they went through the philosophical classes to
gether in the seventies. At the outset he explained
that he had not come to address the members on any
academic topic, but to give " a plain practical talk on
the present situation of the Churches in regard to their
inherited creeds and theological systems." He knew
that his words would carry weight with such an audience ;
and he set out from the disquieting facts brought out by
inquiries during the war as to the meagre, and often
distorted, ideas of Christian teaching held by most
soldiers in the citizen armies of Great Britain. On
these facts he based a vigorous appeal to those who had
themselves accepted the main results of biblical criticism
to practise candour, and to carry the sense of reality

1 Then the Theological College in Edinburgh of the United Free
Church of Scotland, and now of the Church of Scotland.

MEMOIR 139

gained in war service into the services and teaching
of the Church. " I believe/' he said, " that it is the
bounden duty, as well as the plain interest, of the
Churches at the present time to undertake a campaign of
instruction in regard to the Bible, and primarily in
regard to the Old Testament. . . . The growing ignor
ance gives you an excellent opportunity for real in
struction. You will be telling your hearers much that
is new to them, and while you will often have occasion
to emphasise the primitive and rudimentary elements
in the early stages of Hebrew religion, the general effect
of your instruction ought to be to give them back the
Old Testament as a living book and a true praeparatio
evangelica." In this short address, as in his last book,
to which we must soon refer, Pringle-Pattison showed
that he had not lost his grasp of those theological and
religious questions which he had studied and discussed
nearly fifty years before in Edinburgh, Jena and Got-
tingen ; nor had his belief diminished in the value of
the interpretation which a liberal theology afforded.

One of the authors whom Pringle-Pattison had studied
closely from early days, and to whose writings he often
referred, was John Locke, and some years after his
retirement he prepared an abridged edition of Locke's
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with an Intro
duction. But before this a train of events was in motion
which led to the writing of his two last books. He tells
in the Preface to The Idea of Immortality that, in a
Symposium of the Aristotelian Society held in 1918,
certain statements in The Idea of God led to an animated
discussion on " the place and destiny of the finite indi
vidual." " When," he proceeds, " Principal Jacks con
veyed to me in 1920 an invitation from the Hibbert
Trustees to deliver a short course of lectures in Oxford,
and intimated at the same time a strong desire that I
should take Immortality as my subject, it seemed

140 MEMOIR

almost incumbent upon me to endeavour to meet the
wish thus expressed." The delivery of six lectures in
Manchester College in the Lent term of 1921 proved a
pleasant occasion in more than one way, for Pringle-
Pattison found himself again associated with the Trust
under whose auspices he had studied in Germany and
produced his first book forty years before ; and it was
no small satisfaction to have the opportunity of lecturing
in Oxford and of meeting there other students and
teachers of philosophy.

Meanwhile his former colleagues in the University of
Edinburgh took the earliest occasion to ask him to
deliver the Gifford Lectures there. The request, he said,
took him completely by surprise, as he felt that he had
already said his say as Gifford Lecturer in Aberdeen.
But it enabled him to join Edward Caird and James
Ward in the select company of those who have delivered
two double courses of Gifford Lectures in different
Scottish universities. It also gave such of his former
students as were within reach of Edinburgh the rare and
unlooked-for pleasure of seeing him again at his familiar
desk, and hearing his voice in the classroom surrounded
by the names of former medallists from the days of Sir
William Hamilton onward — his own one of the greatest.

The Hibbert Trustees readily agreed that Pringle-
Pattison should expand the course of lectures delivered
in Oxford early in 1921 to form the Edinburgh course
of the following winter. So The Idea of Immortality
took shape, and appeared in book form at the end of
1922. It was written in circumstances of greater leisure
than the earlier Gifford Lectures, and this perhaps
accounts for the impression of unity which it gives.
The march of the argument is steady and unbroken, and
every illustration, whether from poetry or the history
of thought, makes its contribution to the final conclu
sion. The writer's conviction is patent, yet he is careful

MEMOIR 141

not to overstate the importance of Immortality in the
theistic scheme of things. He quotes with approval,
as he had quoted before, Sir George Adam Smith's
statement : " The Old Testament is of use in reminding
us that the hope of immortality is one of the secondary
and inferential elements of religious experience " •;
and he denies that we should " make it the centre and
foundation of our whole world theory." 1 Nor does he
found his thesis on any quasi-Platonic conception of the
soul as an indestructible substance. He essays the more
difficult task of founding it on the Aristotelian idea of
the soul as the " entelechy or fulfilment, the complete
account, of the living body ' ' (Lecture I V.) . Immortality,
he holds, is only a belief of value, if it harmonises with
our experience of the complex unity of the human
individual. Even those who cannot accept the con
clusion of the book, or its final estimate of human destiny,
may well feel that its argument gains force from its
very temperateness and the avoidance of any philoso
phical short-cut to its conclusion.

A few months after its publication Pringle-Pattison
restated some part of his main conclusions in a letter to
an American correspondent 2 :—

" It does not follow that we are to think of personal
immortality as an inherent possession of every human
soul, or a talismanic gift conferred indiscriminately on
every being born in human shape. A true self comes
into being as the result of continuous effort, and the
same effort is needed to hold it together and ensure its
maintenance ; for the danger of disintegration is always
present. If a man is no more than a loosely associated
group of appetites and habits, the self as a moral unity
has either flickered out or has never yet come into

1 The Idea of Immortality, p. 185 ; cf. The Idea of God, p. 43 f.

2 Dr Arthur J. Brown of New York, who has allowed me to quote
the letter here.

142 MEMOIR

existence. To the constitution of such a real self there
must go some persistent purpose, or rather some coherent
system of aims and ideals, and some glimpse at least,
it would seem, of the eternal values. Eternal life, as a
present experience, lent no support, we saw, to the view
that such experience is limited to the present life, nor to
the view that it tends in any way to bring about its own
cessation by dissolving the finite personality. It does,
however, certainly suggest that the further life is to be re
garded as the sequel and harvest of what began here. . . .

" Where life is lived entirely on the animal level, there
seems no reason whatever to suppose that the life does
not come to an end with the death of the body. But
where there are any stirrings of higher things, such
desires, faint and flickering as they may be, seem to
justify the admission of the individual to further oppor
tunity when this earthly stage is ended/'

The Idea of Immortality was dedicated to the Earl of
Balfour, who wrote in acknowledgment : ' Your book
has given me much pleasure ; pray accept my warmest
thanks. I am delighted to have my name associated
in any capacity with a work of yours." Among other
friends to whom Pringle-Pattison sent it were Dr Bernard
Bosanquet and Mr F. H. Bradley, and each acknowledged
the gift in a closely reasoned letter. That from Dr
Bosanquet expresses his final thoughts on the great
subject of immortality, for it was written only a few
days before the beginning of his last illness and a month
before his death on February 8, 1923. It runs as
follows : —

" 13 HEATHGATE,

GOLDERS GREEN, N.W. u.

Jan. 8, 1923.

" MY DEAR PRINGLE-PATTISON, — I received your new
book on Saturday, and having a quiet Sunday yesterday
read it through. I don't mean to say that I can have

MEMOIR 143

done it justice in such a rapid reading, but it was so
interesting that I could not lay it down.

" I think it is very good indeed. On all the points
where moral dangers appear to me to lurk in popular
views of the great subject, it satisfies me pretty com
pletely. I welcome it as sound and lofty teaching, and
am unfeignedly glad that your great authority and
your excellent exposition should be used in helping the
public to such conceptions.

' You will not, of course, expect that I should alter
my own position, or entirely acquiesce in your repre
sentation of it. But I do not expect that I shall recur
to the subject in public, mainly because I foresee no
special occasion for doing so, and I am very content to
leave the matter to the consequences wrhich may emerge
from the temper of our times and the general influences
at work, including your books and mine, of which yours
will be by far the more influential.

" If I did return to the subject, there is one point I
should stress more than I have done before ; and if, as
I think you mean to, you return to it, it would be valu
able if you would say an explicit word on it. It is the
influence, on the general feeling about a future life, of
the change from the orthodox tradition to modern
speculation, and also modern superstition. (See Value
and Destiny, 272 ff.) When I think of the belief in
which I, and I suppose you, were brought up, as expressed
by our hymns and liturgy — ' Who are these arrayed in
white/ &c. — I feel that it was a symbolism of some
thing splendid and great, though untenable. Probation
was to end with death ; by a miracle, one was to be
lifted into realisation of close proximity with deity.

" That idea I think is going, and must go. Both
more spiritual views, as your own teaching about ' eternal
life/ with the effort to banish remoteness and mystery
from the idea of the future life, and more material views

I44 MEMOIR

like those of the ' spiritualists/ are bringing about an
assimilation between ' this ' life and ' the other/ The
presumption in favour of conditions of spiritual progress
in the ' other ' life, differing in principle from what
obtain ' here/ is tending, it seems to me, to vanish.
If we can be as near God in this life as in another, it
seems to follow that we can be as far from him in another
as in this. And in views borrowed from the succession
of lives on this earth, there is a strong presumption (in
spite of M'Taggart) against any transmission of experi
ence or character from one life to its successor. And
such views are increasingly influential.

" With such an atmosphere as this, I do think our
attitude must inevitably change. The certainty formerly
offered to hope is gone . There is nothing anywhere but pro
bation. There are, in a sense, as you suggest, ' elect ' souls ;
but who can be confident that he is of the number ? I
don't know if Jones had dealt anywhere with Browning's
lines — ' There's a fancy some lean to and others hate ' (Old
Pictures in Florence) — but I think they represent a point
of view which will become more and more influential.

" However, my point is just the new idea of the future,
which seems to me to be gaining ground. If it is what
the world is really coming to, so far as it holds to a
future, I can hardly think that it will maintain itself.
I think that a view like Bradley 's in the conclusion of
Truth and Reality will replace it. But I wish very much
that you would say what you think about it in public.
—Yours very truly, B. BOSANQUET."

The letter from Mr Bradley was written some months
later : —

MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD,
May 22-23.

" DEAR PROFESSOR PRINGLE-PATTISON, — I have just
finished reading your Idea of Immortality, which you

MEMOIR 145

so kindly sent to me and which I left on one side too
long. And I must send you a few lines to congratulate
you on what seems to me such an excellent piece of
work, and to thank you for the pleasure and profit
which has come to me in reading it. I have seldom, if
ever, read any book on such a subject which carried me
with it throughout so fully. In fact I am not sure
that I have to dissent anywhere from your conclusions,
if, that is, I have understood them rightly.

" I did not look at M'Taggart's criticism in Mind until
I had read your book, and I do not think he has under
stood you, but on the contrary has very seriously failed
to do so.

" But first let me notice the two places where you
have criticised myself. In the first of these (p. 128) I
accept your criticism without reserve, and agree that I
was wrong. In the second (pp. 156-9) I cannot go so
far as that. What I said is, I think, defensible, except
so far as I laid an undue emphasis on one side of the
matter. I don't think that I denied or even forgot the
other side, but I agree that what I wrote was such as
to produce in the mind of the reader a one-sided and
incorrect impression. The mood in which my book was
conceived and executed was, in fact, to some extent a
passing one. And, if this was regrettable in one sense,
in another sense and from the literary side it was, I
suppose, otherwise. And I cannot alter the book now,
though I would not repeat all of it. And in particular
I certainly would not say now that ' a future life must be
taken as decidedly improbable ' (Appearance, p. 506).

"As to MTaggart, he does not see that what we call
' matter ' and mere material causation is from your
point of view an abstraction which in the end is not
real or true. He does not see that every real conse
quence involves a larger concrete whole and that hence
in reality new consequences come as ' emergents ' from

K

146 MEMOIR

that, however inexplicable these may be from a merely
abstract view such as is matter and mechanical causa
tion. . . .

* The real question with you, I understand, is not as
to ' survival ' but as to ' survival exactly as what.'
Our ' personality ' even in life involves always a ' more/
and so again after death. And the question is as to
whether and how far this ' more ' is such as to supersede
what we call our personality, as such, or whether this
' more ' still more or less and in some sense still pre
serves it. And the question of degree comes in here as
important, especially in the case of more or less worth
less personalities.

" I might perhaps put the matter thus. Every self
has a claim to complete self-realisation, and this must
even include ' happiness/ Every self is, in a sense, so
realised even in life — but how, and in what sense, and
how much of what it calls its ' personality ' is involved
in such complete self-realisation ? So far as the person
ality is one with what we call ' the bad self ' — what are
we to say ?

" And, as in life, so after death.

" Where I think we are agreed is that to answer these
questions is not possible. But for practical purposes
we may come nearest to the truth by embracing the
idea of a personal survival and progress after death —
continued so long as is best for us and for the Whole.
We admit that this is not the entire and full truth —
which is in detail beyond us, and we don't defend the
idea of progress to complete personal perfection as being
more than one aspect of the whole truth, an aspect
which we don't pretend to combine harmoniously with
other aspects — but which is still the best idea compared
with any other alternative in our reach, and is there
fore defensible. I can go as far as this, and I think
that perhaps you will say that this is far enough.

MEMOIR 147

" As to the difficulty with regard to the body, I agree
that the longer we live, the less our bodies as mere
matter ought to count. They ought to be implied in
our ' personality ' to a less and less degree even as a
condition of that. I, however, feel some difficulty as to
a wholly bodiless personality, one in which the body
has come to be only a past condition. And, however
much I dissent in general from the idea of a ' spiritual
body/ I am inclined here to fall back on our ignorance
about ' matter ' and the variety of what may exist
unknown to us, because beyond our actual senses. I
should hence be willing to agree to the possibility of
selves which after death would be perceptible by and
recognizable by one another, and would so far have
something in the way of a body. I see that here we are
on horribly dangerous ground, but still total and absolute
bodilessness — without loss of personality as such — gives
me difficulty. And I am not quite sure as to your
position here. Of course, one shrinks from anything
that looks like an adoption of what is called ' spirit
ualism/

" But I have tried your patience, I fear, too much
already, and you will not, I hope, think yourself called
on to answer this letter — which was meant to be only a
message of congratulation and of thanks. — Yours truly,

"F. H. BRADLEY/'

This letter forms a remarkable culmination to a
friendship between two thinkers who had at one time
occupied standpoints that seemed far apart, and whom
the single-minded pursuit of truth had brought at the
end to a large measure of agreement. In the year in
which Pringle-Pattison received it, he gave his last
course of Gifford Lectures. Its title was " Religious
Origins and the Philosophy of History," but he soon
came to feel that these topics could hardly be moulded

148 MEMOIR

into an effective unity ; so he summarised what he had
said on the latter subject in a lecture on the " Philosophy
of History " published in the Proceedings of the British
Academy for 1924, and spent the following five years
working over the earlier part of the course, adding to it
a treatment of the development of ethical religion in
Judaism and Christianity. Finally, after this long
process of revision, the book appeared in the summer
of 1930, with the full title, " Studies in the Philosophy
of Religion, partly based on the Gifford Lectures delivered
in the University of Edinburgh in the year 1923." The
somewhat unusual phrase " partly based on " indicates
the extent to which the original lectures had been altered
and extended before publication, as does the division of
the book into seventeen chaptefs instead of the familiar
ten lectures. Throughout, the treatment is historical.
Especially in the first six chapters, which deal with
primitive and early religion, the ground covered was
new to the writer, but his own interest in exploring it,
and the power of exposition which never deserted him,
lend vividness to his survey. At intervals the argument
is lit up by a flash of insight focussed in a terse phrase,
as when he says that, even for the poly t heist, " there is a
kind of implicit monotheism in the very act and attitude
of worship " ; or that Jesus " did not merely teach
the fatherhood ; he lived the sonship " (pp. 86, 168).
The last six chapters deal with the New Testament
and early Christianity, and the last, entitled " The
Christ of the Creeds," takes the writer into a theological
region which he had hardly entered before. Yet this
return, from the historical point of view, to the Philosophy
of Religion, which he had treated in his first book from
the standpoint of the great modern idealist systems,
makes manifest the underlying unity of his thinking
during fifty years.

149

CHAPTER XII.

CLOSING YEARS.

1923-1931.

IN the summer of 1923 Professor W. P. Ker died suddenly
while on a walking tour in Switzerland. This was a
blow which Pringle-Pattison felt keenly, and on July 22
he wrote from The Haining to Mr W. P. James : "I
feel I must write to you in our common sorrow, for I
know Ker's death must touch you very closely. For
myself I can think of nothing else since I saw the fact,
so terrible in its total unexpectedness, in Thursday's
paper. Somehow one took it for granted that he would
go on to a serene old age like his father's between eighty
and ninety. One saw others growing older and felt the
advance of years oneself, but he seemed ewig Jung, so
full of the zest of life and the love of all beautiful things,
that one had no fears or anxieties for him and never
dreamt of outliving him. And now the curtain is drawn
through a little over-exertion on the mountains. It is
indeed a lamentable calamity to all his friends. ... I
saw him for the last time on February 5, when we parted
in the Oxford railway station after a most happy week
end when he entertained me at All Souls. . . .

" We were in hopes of inducing him to spend some
time here later in the autumn, and I had been thinking
how pleasant it would be to have you here at the same

150 MEMOIR

time after so long an interval. I have not seen you
since we parted after that Cornish expedition in the
spring of 1914. You remember how Ker walked round
every point of rock, while most of us were contented to
take the base line of the triangle ? Alas ! alas ! for all
that has happened 'twixt then and now, and especially
for this last impoverishment. But will you not, perhaps
all the more, try to come to us for a week and inter
change thoughts and renew old memories ? . . . Do
think of it : I cannot say whether we may be here next
summer ; we might find it desirable to let the place.
But this year at any rate we are here, and the children
and grandchildren are coming to us in relays. In the
end of September we hope to see our soldier son back
from Chanak. ' W. P.' was a household word with all
the children, and they understand what we have lost
in him/'

Just a year later, when Professor James Seth, who had
resigned the Chair of Moral Philosophy a few weeks
before, was calling to inquire for an invalid friend in
Edinburgh, he suddenly passed away. His heart was
known to be gravely affected, but the shock to mem
bers of his family was none the less great. Not only
had he been a close comrade of his elder brother in their
activity as thinkers and teachers, but he had never
married, was a frequent visitor to The Haining, and had
been with the family there or at Churchhill during many
of the tense and sorrowful moments of the war. The
short Memoir which Pringle-Pattison wrote the following
year as an Introduction to the volume, Essays in Ethics
and Religion, shows, even through its characteristic
restraint, in how close a unity the two brothers lived and
worked.

Although such empty places were multiplying in the
circle of Pringle-Pattison's contemporaries and fellow-
workers, there were many others of his own time and

MEMOIR 151

among his pupils who were eager to acknowledge their
debt to him. So, during the following winter, he was
asked to give sittings to Mr A. E. Borthwick, A.R.S.A.,
who painted a portrait of much dignity and expressive
ness, in which he is represented standing in his robes
as a Doctor of Laws. The portrait was presented in the
Senate Hall of the University on March 7, 1925. Pro
fessor W. P. Paterson, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity,
who had known Andrew Seth at the High School and
had in later years been for long his colleague and friend,
presided over the gathering. He said that the portrait
was that of one " known throughout the English-
speaking world as the most distinguished theologian of
Edinburgh University — a philosophical theologian. ' ' The
presentation was made by an Honours student of thirty
years before — Mr H. P. Macmillan, K.C., now Lord
Macmillan — who emphasised, as the Chairman had already
done, the fact that his career was a distinctively Scottish
one. Mr Macmillan also said that no teacher could make
the science miscalled " crabbed metaphysics " more
human and inspiring than could he, while his written
studies never failed to sound the note of optimism.

Pringle-Pattison's reply was in part reminiscent, in
part a defence of the place of philosophy as an integral
part of a university curriculum. After summarising the
view of life which he had always tried to set before his
students, he said that he had always considered the life
of a university teacher as " one of the happiest and most
memorable that could fall to any man's lot. His re
sponsibilities w^ere great, but his reward was also great.
If he loved his subject — and it was presumably the
subject of his choice — he would be in no danger of finding
it grow stale ; it would always be showing new sides of
itself and opening up new vistas of delight." l The
simple ceremony will live in the memories of Pringle-
1 Scotsman, March 9, 1925*

152 MEMOIR

Pattison's old students who were fortunate enough to
form part of the little company as a very fitting
consummation of his long service to the University,
and especially they will treasure the words of his
reply.

A year before this presentation Professor and Mrs
Pringle-Pattison paid a long-planned visit to Italy, and
a year later they revisited Germany — an experience
which, he said, he had hardly hoped again to enjoy. But
Dr Schurman was now Ambassador of the United States
in Berlin, and an invitation to spend ten days at the
Embassy in the city which they seen together as students
nearly half a century before was an opportunity too
good to miss. The resulting visit was described in a
letter to Lord Haldane on May 27, 1926 :—

" We had a delightful fortnight with the Ambassador
in Berlin, the second half of April, and enjoyed summer-
like warmth, while, according to reports, you were
shivering with cold both in Scotland and England. We
met a number of interesting people at the Embassy,
including Luther, the Chancellor, Einstein, Professor
Liebeck (President of the Kant Gesellschaft) , Ludwig
Stein (editor of the Archiv fur GescMchte d. Philosophic],
who sent you his warm regards, and many others. Schur
man had a very high opinion of Luther's wisdom and
honesty and also of Zimmerman's ability. He main
tains cordial relations with them and others, and is, I
think, a persona grata all round.

" The amazing differences between the Germany of
to-day and Germany as we used to know it is, of course,
the total disappearance (submergence at all events) of
the military class. You remember the tall arrogant
officers with their flowing cloaks and clanking spurs
monopolising the pavement in Unter den Linden. Now
not a uniform, other than a policeman's, to be seen in
Germany except the British khaki in Wiesbaden (where

MEMOIR 153

we wound up our stay) and the scarlet mess-jackets of
the officers dancing in the evenings in the hotels there.
If this state of things is allowed to go on for any length
of time, it cannot but profoundly affect the spirit of
the people, and I should doubt whether it would ever
be possible to reimpose conscription upon the nation
when the mass of the people have tasted freedom.

" We had a short but pleasant visit to Gottingen
towards the end of April — ' we ' in this case meaning
Schurman, the Rev. Lewis Muirhead and myself.
Schurman had notified the ' Curator ' of the University
of our intended visit, and we were met at the station
by him and his ' Magnificanz/ the Rector and an Ameri
can professor on the staff — all in tall hats, who whisked
us off to a meeting of the Akademie der Wissenschaften,
which happened to take place that afternoon, thence
to supper and then to a ' Bier-abend ' of the professors
in residence, where a speech of welcome by the Chairman,
to which Schurman replied, was followed by informal
conversation washed down by beer. Next morning they
brought two cars and showed us all the chief sights of
the University, including our own signatures in the
Matriculation Album of 1880 ! — and after they had
entertained us to a most friendly lunch (at the Curator's
house) we left the same afternoon. ... It is a busy
hive of learning, and the University, with its many
institutes, has grown out of knowledge since 1880. The
very face of the rather dull country round has been
changed by judicious planting.

" From Berlin my wife and I went to Weimar for
part of three days, on one of which we went along to
Jena and lunched in the Bar, where John [Dr J. S.
Haldane] and I lunched together for a whole Semester
in 1879. From Weimar we went on to Eisenach, but
just as May came in the weather changed to dull and
cool, and we were obliged to give up the idea of further

154 MEMOIR

exploration in Thuringen. So we did not penetrate to
Ilmenau ; in fact we only got up to the Wartburg in a
closed motor an hour or so before we left Eisenach.

" We went on to Wiesbaden hoping for the warmth
and sunshine one usually gets there, but the same type
of weather continued, and the Strike also came to
unsettle our plans, so we simply remained in a comfort
able hotel there till the way was clear for return.

" The good temper of the nation during the [General]
Strike and the way in which it was terminated greatly
increased our prestige on the Continent. If only some
thing similar could be achieved in the Coal Strike ! "

The loyalty of Pringle-Pattison to old friends has
already been noted. One characteristic instance occurred
when Professor MacCunn's eyesight had seriously failed,
and his wife was suffering from a throat affection which
for the time prevented her reading to him. Hearing of
this, Pringle-Pattison, though in poor health himself,
crossed Scotland in mid- winter to visit and cheer them.

In these years at The Haining the grandchildren
more and more played the part which had been played
by the sons and daughters when Pringle-Pattison and
his wife first made their home there. He had lost none
of his interest in his trees, and when any required pruning
round the house or beside the loch he was wont to do
the work himself. Sometimes his venerable figure might
be seen disappearing into the woods with a small grand
son, immensely proud of his dignity and looking forward
to a lesson in woodcraft, marching on either side, all
three being armed with hatchet, bill or saw. The eldest
grandson, Harry Webster, lived regularly for some
years with his grandparents in order to attend Mer-
chiston School. There were also the two families in
Edinburgh ; and shortly before the end of 1925 the
second son, Ernest, who had married in India, came
home with his wife and child. So the circle enlarged ;

MEMOIR 155

and, even in the last months, when Pringle-Pattison's
physical strength began to ebb, no one could see him
in its midst without feeling how much he remained its
active centre.

The spring of 1928 brought grave anxiety. His wife's
health, on which the anxiety of the war years had un
doubtedly placed a severe strain, broke down in May,
and after several months of illness she passed away at
The Haining on October 25. In the words of Mr Capper :
" It was a blow of extreme severity, and although her
husband bore it with his customary patience he never
recovered from the shock/' A few weeks would have
brought them to the fiftieth anniversary of their first
meeting and the beginning of their love for one another ;
and for forty-four years they had shared all life's ex
periences as man and wife. After so long and perfect
a union the parting could not but leave him who sur
vived weary and lonely, though ever courageous. Even
in regard to his physical strength, those who were
nearest noticed that the heart trouble which had been
apparent earlier now grew markedly worse.

The severance of a friendship of more than fifty years
came in the same year, for on August 19, 1928, Richard
Burdon Haldane passed away at Cloan. A few months
later Pringle-Pattison wrote a long biographical article
for the Proceedings of the British Academy. This
appreciation of Lord Haldane 's work, public and philo
sophical, showed his gifts as an author still unimpaired
—his admirably balanced judgment, and his power of
describing men and events in rapid summary without
baldness and of expressing heartfelt admiration with no
forced or exaggerated note.

The death of Lord Haldane was followed after eighteen
months by that of Lord Balfour. Again Pringle-Pattison
was asked to write an account of the philosophical work
of one whom he had known for so long and whose friend-

156 MEMOIR

ship he so highly valued. He felt the importance of the
task — his last, as it proved — and it occupied him closely
through the early months of 1931. When his last illness
began, it was complete, save for the final revision of the
closing portion, and at the date when this Memoir is
written it awaits publication.

In the last three lonely years his children and grand
children were able to do much to fill his days with
varied interest. He enjoyed runs by motor to many of
the beautiful and historic places round Edinburgh with
one or other of his children, including his son Siegfried,
who spent part of this time with his regiment at Redford,
just outside the city. In March 1929 Norman Pringle-
Pattison snatched a few weeks from the claims of busi
ness and started with his father for Naples. Pringle-
Pattison had long wished to see that region, and entered
with zest into the exploration of the enchanted country
surrounding the Bay of Naples — Paestum, Pompeii,
Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri. Then they turned north, to
wards Rapallo, and had one day in Rome. Here he was
able to act as guide to his son (he had visited Rome some
years earlier with his wife), and showed the same enthu
siasm in taking him round the Forum, the Palatine
and St Peter's. From Rapallo Norman Pringle-Pattison
returned home, but his father remained on the Italian
Riviera with a party which included three old friends-
Professor and Mrs Sorley and Mrs Ross, whose husband,
Dr David M. Ross, had been a senior friend in the
philosophical classes in the seventies. Unfortunately
influenza descended upon the party, and although Pringle-
Pattison escaped, his return had to be made alone by sea
from Genoa.

The following year, as has been noted, saw the pub
lication of his last book. Of the philosophers of his own
generation few now survived. But when the name
of one, Professor Alexander, appeared in the King's

MEMOIR 157

Birthday Honours List as receiving the Order of Merit,
he at once wrote : " Very hearty congratulations on
the much coveted and well bestowed honour just con
ferred on you. I am glad both for your own sake and
the sake of philosophy."

In the early summer of 1931 Pringle-Pattison embarked
on his last foreign journey, a cruise to the Northern
Capitals with his youngest and only surviving brother.
For Mr John Seth it was a time of very real anxiety ;
for the bodily strength of his elder brother proved less
than had been anticipated, and very much less than the
determination of his will. With his gentleness had always
gone an unusual tenacity of purpose ; and even now he
was unwilling to miss any opportunity of seeing the
historic cities at which the steamer successively called.
At Copenhagen he collapsed on the quay after landing,
and had to be assisted up the companionway to his
cabin. Finally, the care and watchfulness of his brother
brought him safe home ; but on his return to The
Haining his strength began slowly to ebb. One of his
last messages, written in pencil, was sent as a birthday
greeting to his oldest friend, Mr Capper, and included
the two words, " No pain." The end came peacefully
in the early morning of September i in the library at
his beloved Haining, and three days later his body was
laid to rest in the city which he also loved, and in
which his greatest work as a teacher was accomplished.

It is too soon, even if this were the appropriate
place, to assess the rank which the books of Pringle-
Pattison may finally hold among the philosophical
writings of his time. He himself assuredly made no
claim to rank among the di majores of philosophy. He
was content, as the title of his chief book shows, to
identify his thinking closely with that of his time, and
to answer its questions in the form which his contem-

158 MEMOIR

poraries gave to them. At times he even seemed to
spend his strength in the discussion of views set forth
by men less in intellectual stature than himself ; and
these portions of his work may be compared to the vine
whose branches bear a nobler fruit than that of the
trees by which they are supported, and from which they
take their direction. Essentially he was of those who,
in words which he would not have disowned, " serve
their own generation by the will of God."

Yet the value of his work will assuredly extend beyond
his own generation, and even that of those who learned
from him. It summarised, and in some sense brought
to a close, a development of two centuries in Scottish
philosophy ; and it may well prove to have a vitality
and an interest for thinkers of generations still distant,
so that future searchers for a sure basis of theistic belief
may turn to it for light on the problems of their own day.

But one thing admits of no dispute — the service which
this great teacher accomplished by what he was, not less
than by what he taught. In the words of Professor
Hallett : " His personal dignity was a discipline, his
interest a sufficient reward, his commendation an inspira
tion to new effort, and to those who were fortunate enough
to win his friendship — a gift not lightly bestowed — he
was an unfailing support in illness and in effort, in the
more dignified forms of social intercourse and in the
studious adventures of the intellectual life. As a philo
sopher his intellectual humility was only matched by
his native acumen and scholarly industry. Nothing
would have been easier than for him to set up for a great
philosopher ; for there was nothing of the eclectic about
him, in spite of a method of exposition suggesting
eclecticism to the unwary. He thought through all his
convictions, yielding nothing to their peremptoriness
that was not supported by their intellectual trans
parency, and laboured to place them in due order in a

MEMOIR 159

consistent system, keeping ever in mind the necessary
limitations of human thought and the high responsi
bilities of his chosen vocation."

He himself expressed the governing principles of his
own work as a teacher on the occasion already described
in March 1925, by saying that his effort had not been to
impose on his pupils dogmatic solutions of his own ;
rather he taught them first to appreciate the difficulties
and complexities of the questions raised, yet suggested
in the end that " to think the worst of the universe and
its Author was not necessarily to come nearest the
truth." ' Truth, goodness, beauty, love/' he concluded,
" are realities as well as values ; and how can we explain
their existence save in a world which is fundamentally
spiritual ? "

Sixteen years earlier he wrote lines regarding his
friend, Simon Somerville Laurie, which, along with the
sentences just quoted, may well stand as his final
message : —

We lay in earth the weary heart,

The massive labouring brain,
Mindful how firm and clear his faith,

The spirit lives again.

Within some higher sphere, he taught,

New truth shall greet our view ;
If God is God and worth our trust,

Death shall our life renew.

And shall we say his faith was vain,
Friends round his grave here met ?

For us he lives, a Presence still,
How then should God forget ?

THE
BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

Delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1891

BY

A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON

[Throughout the Lectures, the footnotes in square brackets are taken
from the Author's annotated copy except where otherwise marked. — ED.]

LECTURE I.

PSYCHOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS.

IN what is called in the widest sense ' philosophical ' dis
cussion it is tolerably well known by this time that a
fruitful source of confusion and controversy has been
the mixing up of psychological with strictly philosophical
or metaphysical questions. This is one of the current
criticisms upon the English school of thinkers as repre
sented by Locke, Berkeley and Hume, and their suc
cessors in the present century like the Mills. It is said
that when we ask them for a philosophical theory of
knowledge and existence, they reply with an account of
the growth of consciousness in the individual sentient
organism. There is a great measure of truth in this
criticism. The fault of these philosophers lies, however,
not in their exclusively psychological attitude — for in
that case their theories would stand as psychology, and
we should look for our philosophy elsewhere — but in
their unconscious shifting from one point of view to the
other. They are far from being pure psychologists ;
there is a great deal of philosophy or theory of know
ledge in Locke, Berkeley and Hume. But they speak
sometimes from one point of view, sometimes from the
other, without being aware that the two points of view
are different. This criticism, however — though it is
specially true of English philosophy — applies more or
less to philosophical writers in general, and hence it is
encouraging to note that within quite recent times a

164 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

sense of the need of greater precision has shown itself
in the most varied quarters, English as well as conti
nental, among empiricists as well as transcendentalists.
Strenuous attempts have been made to differentiate the
various questions embraced under the general term
' philosophy/ and assign each as a subject of inquiry to
a separate science or discipline.

In this way there has been constituted what, so far as
the name goes, is a new science, though the inquiries
grouped under it have formed part of philosophical
investigation since a very early time. This is the science
which, for the last thirty years or so, the Germans have
come to call distinctively Erkenntnisstheorie, or theory
of knowledge. Theory of Knowledge has been the cir
cumlocution largely adopted by English writers who
have wished to enforce the distinction between these
inquiries and the investigations of psychological science.
But as the distinction has come more to the front, the
need of a single word has been felt — were it only, as
Hamilton pointed out in the case of psychology, that
we may be able to form an adjective from it — and
accordingly just as psychology supplanted the more
cumbrous designations such as science or philosophy of
mind, so the excellent and in every way unobjectionable
title of epistemology will, in all probability, permanently
take the place of the less convenient designation " theory
of knowledge."

But it will be asked what is the subject of this new
science, or rather what particular philosophical inquiries
are to be isolated and grouped under it ? To this it
may be answered generally that epistemology is an
investigation of knowledge as knowledge, or, in other
words, of the relation of knowledge to reality, of the
validity of knowledge. This, at least, is the fundamental
question to which other epistemological discussions are
subsidiary. The precise bearing of this definition is

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 165

best seen by a contrast between epistemology and psy
chology in their mode of dealing with the same subject-
matter ; for, in a sense, the fact of knowledge belongs
to psychology as much as to epistemology. This contrast
has been lucidly expounded within the last few years by
several writers. But the difference in point of view is
very fairly stated by Locke, though he was one of the
worst sinners in practically confounding what he had
theoretically distinguished. The distinction between
psychology and epistemology, indeed, is the distinction
between the Second Book of the Essay and the Fourth,
and this Locke explains in his Introduction as follows :
" First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas,
notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which
a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in
his mind ; and the ways whereby the understanding
comes to be furnished with them." This is pure psy
chology — what, he asks, are the mental states which
constitute the individual mind, and into what elementary
facts may they be analysed — of what primitive facts
may the more complex be the result ? " Secondly [he
proceeds], I shall endeavour to show what knowledge
the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty,
evidence and extent of it." This is the question of
epistemology : What knowledge can I have of the
world of men and things, by means of my mental
states ?

Psychology, according to Locke's way of putting it,
deals with ' ideas/ which he defines as " the immediate
objects of the mind in thinking " ; l it treats ideas as
mental facts which have an existence of their own in
consciousness. Epistemology deals with the ' knowledge '
which we reach by means of these ideas or immediate

1 Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. So, again, Essay,
Bk. II., c. 8, 8 : " Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the
immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding."

i66 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

mental facts. It takes the ideas not as themselves bits
of fact, but as signs or symbols of some further reality ;
it takes them, in short, as ideas of things. Hence the
word ' idea/ taken even in the wide sense in which it
is used by Locke, is not a good one to employ in a
psychological reference ; for it inevitably contains this
epistemological implication, this reference of the mental
state to something beyond itself. " States of conscious
ness/' as Mr Ward suggests, would be a more appro
priate and colourless designation for the objects of
psychological science. The psychologist deals with
psychical events merely as such ; the world of conscious
states is the reality with which alone he is concerned,
and each state of consciousness is a real fact in that
world — a fact occurring at a definite time and in a definite
set of connections with other psychical facts. The inter
connections of this factual world, the laws of the happen
ing of psychical events, are what the psychologist has
to investigate.

It is only for the psychologist, however, that mental
states are interesting on their own account, as subjective
realities or facts. To everyone else they are interesting
only for what they mean, for the knowledge they give us
of a world beyond themselves. Viewed in themselves,
the mental states are, as it were, only instrumental ; by
them, as Locke says, the understanding hath knowledge.
They are merely a mechanism by which a world of men
and things is somehow revealed to me. It is only for
the psychologist, I say, that the investigation of this
mechanism, as a mechanism, has an interest. To all
the rest of mankind ideas or presentations are interesting
only for the knowledge they give us of a reality beyond
themselves. In point of fact, we never pause to con
sider them as what they are in themselves — we treat
them consistently as significant, as ideas of something,
as representative or symbolic of a world of facts. Now

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 167

it is from this latter point of view that epistemology
considers ideas.

Of course this distinction, even the manner of stating
it, is far from being new. Not to go farther back, it is
drawn with great clearness in the writings of Descartes
and his followers. In fact, considerable emphasis is
laid upon it in the Cartesian philosophy, and a special
terminology is employed to designate it. " Ideas," says
Descartes himself,1 " may be taken in so far only as
they are certain modes of consciousness," and so regarded,
" they all seem in the same manner to proceed from
myself." That is to say, they are all subjective functions
or psychical events. But they may also be considered
" as images, of which one represents one thing and
another a different." So far as the idea is taken simply
as an act or function of the mind, a subjective fact,
it is said by the Cartesians to have " esse formate seu
proprium " ; so far as it is taken in its representative
capacity, as standing for some object thought, it is said
to have an objective or vicarious being — esse objectivum
sive vicarium. There is a tendency in the Cartesian
school to appropriate the term ' idea ' in the first or
psychological sense, and to use ' perception ' in the
epistemological reference. Perception is certainly a
term which should be the exclusive property of the
epistemologist ; and it is satisfactory, therefore, to note
that the most recent psychologists seem inclined to
substitute for it the term ' presentation/ But the term
' idea ' also, as we have seen, belongs more appropriately
to epistemology, and so pre-eminently, of course, do
such terms as ' knowledge ' and ' cognition/ As already
indicated, the best general psychological equivalent is
states of consciousness, mental states, psychical functions.

In accordance with what has been said, Epistemology
may be intelligibly described as dealing with the relation

1 Third Meditation.

168 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

of knowledge to reality. Of course, if we take reality
in the widest sense, our cognitive states are also part
of reality ; they also are. The wildest fancy that flits
through the mind exists in its own way, fills out its own
moment of time and takes its individual place in the
fact-continuum which constitutes the universe. But, as
we have seen, this aspect of mental facts may be con
veniently neglected, and hence reality in the above
phrase comes to be used in a narrower sense. It means
not necessarily physical or material realities, but realities
which have a different fashion of existence from the
fleeting and evanescent mode of psychical states — beings
or things which are in some sense permanent and inde
pendent, which at all events have a reality different in
kind from that of mental states. This reference of ideas
to a world of reality beyond themselves is what is meant
when knowledge is contrasted with reality, and when
question is made of the relation of the one to the other.
This way of putting the epistemological problem may
be said to beg the question at issue between Idealism
and Realism — inasmuch as the terminology is incom
patible with those idealistic theories which deny, or
seem to deny, the existence of any such extra-conscious
reality as is here spoken of. In truth, however, this is
not so ; for in any case this dualism seems to exist,
and so, if not justified, it has to be explained away.
Subjective idealism, accordingly, must have an episte-
mology of its own, even if it be only of a negatively
critical character. For indeed no theory can deny the
contrast between the present content of consciousness
and that which it symbolises or stands for. No theorist
takes the particular mental state as independent and
self-sufficient ; he cannot avoid referring it beyond
itself. But if he is a subjective idealist, say like Mill,
he 'will try to avoid the acknowledgment that this
reference of present consciousness beyond itself carries

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 169

us beyond consciousness altogether. He will explain it
as a reference of a particular mental state to a permanent
law of connection between mental states, and thus
convey the impression that the reality to which the
subjective consciousness refers is still in a manner
within that consciousness. This does not appear to me
to be an adequate account of the facts, but what I am
concerned to show just now is only that the episte-
mological question is not determined out of hand by the
way in which it has been defined. The essential episte-
mological contrast is as fully recognised by Mill as any
Realist could wish to see it. Take his own words in
evidence : " The conception I form of the world existing
at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I
am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensa
tion. . . . These various possibilities are the important
thing to me in the world. My present sensations are
generally of little importance, and are, moreover, fugi
tive ; the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent,
which is the character that mainly distinguishes our
idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation."
This reference of the ' fugitive ' content of consciousness
to a ' permanent/ which is somehow beyond it (a refer
ence which Mill admits and emphasises), is just what
we ordinarily mean by knowledge, and as such it con
stitutes the problem of epistemology. But the unavoid
able acknowledgment of this contrast, of this reference,
does not imply any decision as to the nature of the
' permanent/ or the precise sense in which the ' beyond '
is to be understood. It may be Mill's permanent possi
bilities of sensation, it may be the unconscious matter
of popular philosophy, it may be an infinite number of
monadic consciousnesses, or it may be a system of
divine or objective thought. These are further questions,
to be determined partly by epistemology, partly by
metaphysics, but they all equally presuppose that

170 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

epistemological dualism which can be denied only by
a theory which would be content with the momentary
presentations of sense, as they come and go in hopeless
entanglement and disarray.*

To recapitulate, then. Psychology, assuming the ex
istence of a subject or medium of consciousness, seeks
to explain, mainly by the help of association or processes
practically similar, how out of the come-and-go of con
scious states, there are evolved such subjective facts as
perceptions, the belief in an independent real world and
the idea of the Ego or subject himself. It investigates
how such ideas and beliefs come to pass, but it does not
touch the further question whether they are well-founded
or no. They may be a correct account of the real state of
things, or they may be illusions ; but anyway they are
beliefs, subjective facts which may be shown with
probability to have arisen in a certain way. And that
is enough for psychology which, so far as it sticks to its
own last, does not seek to go beyond the inner world
of the subject. The external world, so far as psychology
treats it, is simply a complex presentation in conscious
ness, a subjective object : with the extraconscious or
trans-subjective psychology ex vi termini can have no
concern. Belief in a trans-subjective world may, indeed
—must, in fact — be treated by the psychologist. But
that belief, again, he treats simply as a subjective fact ;
he analyses its constituents and tells us the complex
elements of which it is built up ; he tells us with great
precision what we do believe, but so far as he is a pure
psychologist he does not attempt to tell us whether our
belief is true, whether we have real warrant for it. On
that point he is dumb.

If it is objected that this view of psychology, as
limited to the subjective world, is insufficient, seeing
that in great part of his work the psychologist is bound
to assume the correlation of mind and body, and the

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 171

existence of an external cause of impressions, I reply
that, on its physiological or experimental side, psy
chology simply places itself at the point of view of the
other sciences. It is now as purely objective as it was
before purely subjective. It takes up its position in
the object from the outset, and treats subjective facts
themselves as objective, i.e., as mere appendages or
accompaniments of the objective facts of nerve and
brain. Psychology is thus either purely subjective or
purely objective x in its standpoint, according as we
look at it. What it does not deal with is the nature of
the relation between the subject and the object, which
is exemplified in every act of knowledge.

Now it is the essential function of epistemology to
deal with this very relation, to investigate it on the side
of its validity, its truth. With what right do we pass
beyond our subjective states ? What is the ground of
our belief in an independent world ? Our cognitive
states appear to refer themselves to a reality which we
know by their means. Epistemology does not, like
psychology, rest in the appearance. It seeks to deter
mine whether the appearance is true, and, if true, in what
sense precisely it is to be understood. The point on
which psychology is dumb, forms the central problem
of epistemological science. What is reality, the episte-
mologist asks.2 Is there any reality beyond the conscious
states themselves and their connections ? If there is,
in what sense can we be said to know it ? Is knowledge,
inference, or belief, the most appropriate word to use in
the circumstances ? The fundamental question of ex
ternal perception thus broadens out into a general con
sideration of the foundations of belief. And, accordingly,
the whole inquiry might be fitly enough so described in a

1 [But this objective or natural science psychology neglects the
implication of a subject.]

a [Rather the metaphysician.]

172 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

more generalised fashion — namely, as an inquiry into
" the foundations of belief." So it is described by Mr
Arthur Balfour in the sub-title of his Defence of Philo
sophic Doubt, a book which may be regarded as one of
the most brilliant of recent English contributions to
wards an epistemology or theory of knowledge in the
strict sense of these terms. Mr Balfour expressly defines
his subject-matter as "a. systematic account of the
grounds of belief and disbelief," and he is at pains in
his introductory chapter to distinguish the inquiry most
carefully from psychology, on the one hand, so far as that
investigates merely the growth and causes of a belief,
and on the other hand from metaphysics or ontology.1

1 As regards a name for the inquiry thus isolated and denned,
Mr Balfour proposes the term Philosophy, acknowledging at the
same time that this application is not exactly sanctioned by usage.
If it were at all possible to appropriate the general term, Philosophy,
in a specific sense, there might be much to say for this innovation.
Many arguments in its favour might be drawn even from the vague
sense which the term bears in current usage. In modern times, and
within the present century in particular, Philosophy is very frequently
used in the schools as equivalent to Epistemology or Theory of
Knowledge. But in spite of this, it seems to me hopeless (and un
desirable) to cut ourselves loose from the tradition of more than two
thousand years, which associates the term irrevocably with meta
physical or ontological speculation. By metaphysics or ontology I
mean some kind of theory or no-theory of the ultimate nature of
things. Such a metaphysical theory is that to which all other philoso
phical inquiries lead up — that in which they culminate — and it seems
to me undesirable to define philosophy in such a way as to exclude
from its scope what has hitherto been considered its heart and soul.
I confess, indeed, that if we are to narrow the term at all, I should
be inclined to identify philosophy rather with metaphysics or ontology.
The claim on behalf of epistemology, as I take it, is that it lays the
substructure ; it is the necessary preliminary alike of science and of
metaphysics. But it may as fairly be argued on the other side that
the ultimate or culminating science has the best claim to the time-
honoured title. Happily, however, we are not reduced to an aimless
wrangle of this description, for Epistemology is just the single term
we want. Philosophy will doubtless remain in its indefmiteness as a
generic title, associated now more closely with theory of knowledge,
now more closely with metaphysics ; while epistemology (overlapping
into logic), metaphysics or ontology, and ethics (which as metaphysic
of ethics is connected in the most intimate way with any ultimate
theory of things) — while these three at least, to mention no more at
present, are covered by her ample aegis.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 173

For on this side also the line requires to be drawn. If
epistemology is not to be confounded with psychology
on the one hand, neither is it to be identified with meta
physics on the other. The prevalent confusion in English
philosophy between the two first has been well exposed
by Kantian and Hegelian writers, but some of them
have themselves fallen into a new confusion between
epistemology and metaphysics. A considerable section
of my last course of Balfour Lectures l was devoted,
indeed, to showing that English Neo-Kantianism, as it
has come to be called, seeks to establish metaphysical
positions by arguments which are purely epistemological,
and therefore unconvincing when stretched beyond their
proper application. And in this respect I have seen no
reason, during the years that have elapsed, to change
the views I then expressed. For it must not be for
gotten that the question which epistemology finds
before it is the relation of the individual knower to a
world of reality — a world whose very existence it is
bound to treat at the outset as problematical. How,
or in what sense, does the individual knower transcend
his own individual existence and become aware of other
men and things ? It is this relatively simple and mani
festly preliminary question which epistemology has to
take up. Subjective states are plainly our data ; it is
there we have our foothold, our pied a terre ; but unless
we can step beyond them, metaphysics in any con
structive sense can hardly make a beginning. Episte
mology, if its results are negative, necessarily leads to a
thorough-going scepticism ; but if its results are positive,
it only clears the way for metaphysical construction or
hypothesis. The mere fact that we believe ourselves
to have successfully made the leap from the subjective
to a real which is independent of our subjectivity, does
not reveal to us offhand the ultimate ground or essence

1 Hegelianism and Personality.

174 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

of that real. Epistemology, in short, has to do entirely
with the relation of the subjective consciousness to a
trans-subjective world which it knows or seems to
know. Metaphysics has to do with the ultimate nature
of the reality which reveals itself alike in the conscious
ness which knows and the world which is known. The
categories of the one are subjective and trans-subjective
(conscious state and real being) ; the categories of the
other are pre-eminently essence and appearance.

It is true we use some categories in both connections ;
but if we look more carefully we shall find that they
bear a totally different sense in the two cases, and
grievous is the damage that has ensued to philosophy
from the failure to keep the two senses separate. The
much-abused term ' phenomenon ' is one of those double-
faced words ; phenomenon in a metaphysical reference
is the manifestation or revelation of an essence or in
dwelling reality. When the poet speaks of " a Presence
which disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts,
a motion and a spirit which impels all thinking things,
all objects of all thought," he is metaphysically con
trasting the essential Spirit with the universe of intelli
gences and intelligibilia, which are its manifestation or
phenomenon. Natura natumta, in the old phrase, is the
phenomenon of natura natumns. If, with Goethe, we
say that nature is the garment of God by which we see
Him, we make nature the phenomenon of a divine
essence. If we take atoms and the void as our meta
physical principia, then the human consciousness and
the variegated face of nature as it appears to that
consciousness are phenomena of what Berkeley calls the
materialist's " stupid thoughtless somewhat." If we say
with the Hegelians that Thought is the ultimate reality
which manifests itself alike in nature and man, we are
engaged with the same metaphysical contrast ; if we
say Will with Schopenhauer or the Unconscious with

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 175

Hartman, it is still the same — it is a metaphysical con
trast, a metaphysical problem, which engages us. But
phenomenon has also come to be used in an epistemolo-
gical reference, and then it means, and ought to be
restricted to mean, the subjective state as contrasted
with the trans-subjective reality known by means of
that state. In that sense, familiar to us from Kant, to
say that we know only phenomena means that we know
only our own conscious states and cannot know ' things-
in-themselves/ that is to say, the trans-subjective
realities of which our states are the evidence. Here it
is obvious the use of the term ' phenomenon ' is quite a
new one. Nor is the epistemological thing-in-itself to
be identified with the metaphysical essence. For even
if we possessed that knowledge of trans-subjective
realities which Kantianism denies, we should still be
dealing only with phenomena in the metaphysical sense
— with the particular existences of the universe, not
with the essence or universal of which they are the
expression. When such a serious ambiguity is dis
covered lurking in a term which is so freely bandied
about as ' phenomena/ it may well be doubted whether
the controversialists are always clear as to the sense in
which they mean it to be taken.1

But, indeed, the time-honoured title of Idealism itself
covers a double entendre of a similar description, accord
ing as it is used metaphysically or epistemologically.
Metaphysically, Idealism is opposed most ordinarily
to Materialism ; in the widest sense it is the opposite
of what may be called the mechanical and atheistic
view of the universe, whatever special form that

1 A fuller analysis of the use of the term ' phenomena ' in Kantian
and positivistic thought would bring some of these inconsistencies
instructively to light. For the plausibility of the quasi-scientific
agnosticism which is so widely spread in our periodicals and popular
philosophy depends in great part on a systematic confusion between
the two different senses of the word.

176 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

take. Is self-conscious thought with its ideal ends — the
True, the Beautiful and the Good — the self-realising
End that works in changes and makes it Evolution ? or
are these but the casual outcome of a mechanical system
—a system in its ultimate essence indifferent to the
results which in its gyrations it has unwittingly created
and will as unwittingly destroy ? Is thought or matter
the prius ? Is the ultimate essence and cause of all
things only " dust that rises up, and is lightly laid again " ;
or is it the Eternal Love of Dante's Vision— " the love
that moves the sun and the other stars " ? That is the
fundamental metaphysical antithesis. If we embrace
the one alternative, however we may clothe it in detail,
we recognise the universe as our home, and we may
have a religion ; if we embrace the other, then the
spirit of man is indeed homeless in an alien world. In
the plain, impressive words of Marcus Aurelius — "the
universe is either a confusion and a dispersion, or it is
unity and order and providence. If it is the former,
why do I care about anything else than how I shall at
last become earth ? But if the other supposition is
true, I venerate, and I am firm and I trust in Him who
governs." Marcus Aurelius expresses the difference from
the religious or practical side ; from the speculative
side the difference is, as I have said, a metaphysical
one, and all the theories which support the latter alter
native may be embraced under the generic name of
Idealism.

Quite distinct from this metaphysical Idealism, how
ever, is the epistemological Idealism which is opposed,
not to Materialism, but to Realism. Here the question
at issue is not the problem of the ultimate constitution
of the universe ; it is the question of the theory of
knowledge — in its most obvious and easy form — the
question of the external world and the nature of the
existence we are prepared to assign to it. Has it any

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 177

existence beyond the minds of the conscious beings who
perceive it, or is per dpi its whole esse ? Does the actual
and possible experience of conscious beings constitute
an exhaustive account of its modus essendi ? Is it a
mere phenomenon, a mental appearance, or does it
possess in some sense an extra-conscious reality of its
own ? The question might be more exactly formulated,
for as soon as we essay a solution we find that it involves
not only the existence of what we usually call the
external world, but all existence whatever beyond my
conscious states. It includes, therefore, the validity of
my belief in the existence of other conscious beings.
But the question itself and its details are not at present
before us : we are not called upon at this stage to do
more than indicate its general nature. It is obvious
that we are here in the presence of a set of problems of a
widely different range and import from the metaphysical
problem indicated a minute or two ago. We are dealing
with the preliminary question of the extent and validity
of knowledge — in a word, with epistemology, not with
metaphysics or ontology. It is equally obvious that
epistemological Idealism does not coincide with the
metaphysical Idealism sketched above. Berkeley is
usually classed as a subjective Idealist in the epistemolo
gical sense ; and if we accept this classification, we
might say that in his case the two senses of Idealism
happen to fit the same person. But Berkeley is NOT a
consistent subjective idealist : he is only an imma-
terialist. He believes in the real trans-subjective ex
istence of other finite spirits, and of God the infinite
Spirit, and it is his epistemological Realism in these
respects that enables him to reach his metaphysical
Idealism — his conviction of order and reason at the
heart of things. Consistent epistemological idealism
must be Solipsism at the best ; indeed, it is Hume,
not Berkeley, that is in this sense an idealist of the

M

178 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

purest water, and Hume is not so much as a Solipsist.
It might easily be shown that epistemological Idealism
inevitably conducts us in consistency to scepticism of
the Humian or an essentially similar type. Where a
so-called Idealism fails to reach this goal, it is in virtue
of the realistic elements which it inconsistently adopts
into its system. Such a line of argument would form a
convincing proof from history of the distinction on which
I am insisting between epistemology and metaphysics.
For scepticism is, of course, so far from being allied to
metaphysical Idealism that it would rather require to
be bracketed with materialism. Though, of course, not
dogmatic like the latter, it ranks with it as a philos
ophy of despair. If epistemological Idealism is thus
twin brother of Scepticism, it is plain, on the other
hand, from what I have said, that a thinker may be,
epistemologically, a strenuous Realist, and at the same
time an Idealist in the broad metaphysical sense of the
term. He is such an Idealist if he recognises that all
the real individuals whose trans-subjective existence he
maintains are " moments in the being " of an intelli
gently directed Life. Indeed, as has been hinted, it is
only in virtue of epistemological Realism that we can
avoid Scepticism and so much as begin our journey
towards metaphysical Idealism.

It follows, therefore, that nothing can be more essential
to clear thinking than to keep these two sets of questions
apart ; yet I am afraid that they are constantly inter
changed. In particular it seems to me that this is the
case with many of the English thinkers, who profess a
general allegiance to Kant or Hegel. The English neo-
Hegelians convey the impression that in order to reach
a metaphysical, or, as they call it, a spiritual, Idealism,
it is at least necessary to deny the reality of ' things-in-
themselves/ Metaphysically they mean by this, as I
perfectly well understand, that the external world is

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 179

not to be taken as an independent fact, existing, so to
speak, on its own account, and having only accidental
relations with the rest of the universe. The universe is
once for all a whole, and the external world, as the
Hegelians put it, is essentially related to intelligence ;
in other words, it is not a brute fact existing outside
the sweep of the divine life and its intelligent ends. In
all this I most heartily agree with the neo-Hegelians.
Whether we can absolutely prove so much or no, it is
certain that so much is involved in every constructive
system of metaphysics ; and certainly we cannot believe
less without lapsing into scepticism. If we put this
metaphysical sense upon the words, then I most cer
tainly believe, in Berkeley's phrase, that " the absolute
existence of unthinking things are words without a
meaning." There is no metaphysical thing-in-itself, no
res completa, except the universe regarded as a self-
existent whole. The thinker who leaves anything
outside in this way makes confession of speculative bank
ruptcy. But though the unrelated thing-in-itself can
have no place in metaphysics, it is quite otherwise
with the epistemological thing-in-itself, if we are to
designate trans-subjective reality by this ill-omened
phrase. The existence of the latter must be asserted
as strenuously as that of the former must be denied.
All my fellow-men are things-in-themselves to me in the
epistemological sense — extra-conscious realities — and I
fail to see how we can draw any hard and fast line at
them.

Hence, as I have argued on a previous occasion, any
thing which tends to confuse the two questions is to be
deprecated : we cannot deal with the two in the same
breath without confusing the issues. Our epistemological
premises will not bear our metaphysical conclusion.
Epistemology starts, and must start, from the individual
human consciousness — the only consciousness known to

i8o BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

us. If, however, it be pointed out to a neo-Hegelian
that the epistemological assertions which he makes as
to the relation of knower and known are plainly unten
able as applied to this consciousness, we are met by the
rejoinder that they are not meant to be understood of
any subjective or individual consciousness, but of a
so-called universal or divine consciousness. It is not
my purpose at this stage to discuss the satisfactoriness
of this hypothetical divine epistemology as a metaphysic
of existence, but I would point out that by this procedure,
illegitimate as I consider it, the real question of episte
mology is burked. That question is very fairly put by
Professor Huxley in a page of his little book on Hume.
In pursuance of a favourite line of thought, he is skil
fully balancing Idealism and Materialism against one
another in such a way as to leave both problematical,
and in stating the case in favour of what he calls Idealism,
he uses the following expression : " For any demon
stration that can be given to the contrary effect, the
' collection of perceptions ' which makes up my con
sciousness may be an orderly phantasmagoria generated
by the Ego, unfolding its successive scenes on the back
ground of the abyss of nothingness." l With Professor
Huxley's own view we have nothing to do here, but
simply with the statement quoted, namely, that there
is no logically coercive proof of any real existence
beyond the subjective consciousness. Idealism is used
by Professor Huxley in its epistemological sense, and is
equivalent with him to Solipsism. His position amounts
to this : that reason does not force us to go beyond the
circle of our own consciousness : all that is may be a
skilfully woven system of my individual presentations
and representations. This is the true question of episte
mology ; that, at least, which it has first to settle. But
to judge from the writings of the neo-Kantians and

1 Hume (English Men of Letters), pp. 80-8 1.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 181

Hegelians, one would hardly gather that individual
knowers existed at all. The subjective consciousness
seems suppressed ; they often speak as if knowledge
were not a subjective process at all. In Hegel himself,
just for this reason, there is no epistemology ; we hear
nothing of individuals, but only of the universal process
in which objective thought comes to consciousness of
itself.

Hegelianism, in fact, offers an eminent example of the
confusion between Epistemology and Metaphysics on
which I am dwelling. With Hegel the essence of the
universe is thought here in the subject and thought
there in the object ; and there is some temptation
therefore to think that this metaphysical identity
absolves us from the epistemological inquiry. But
that is not the case. However much the objective world
and the individual knower may be identical in essence,
the objective thought which he recognises is still trans-
subjective to the individual knower, just as much
beyond his individual consciousness, as if it were the
crass matter of the Natural Dualist ; and the question
how we reach this trans-subjective, how we transcend
the individual consciousness, has still to be faced. The
epistemological dualism, in other words, remains in full
force, and only if that is satisfactorily surmounted, can
we have any guarantee for our metaphysical monism,
for the asserted identity of thought and being. Far be
it from me to say, however, that Hegel and the neo-
Hegelians are the only sinners in this respect. If Hegel
swamps Epistemology in Metaphysics, the Realism of
Scottish philosophy often errs as much in an opposite
direction. In answer to Hume it insists (most rightly,
as I think, in principle, though not always happily in
point of expression) upon an epistemological dualism
of subject and object as the fundamental fact of know
ledge. But when it proceeds forthwith to treat this

182 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

epistemological dualism of knowledge and reality as a
metaphysical dualism between mind and matter, between
two generically different substances, it falls at once into
most unphilosophical crudities. Dualism in knowledge
is no more a proof of metaphysical heterogeneity than
identity of metaphysical essence in Hegel's sense can be
taken as eliminating the epistemological problem.

The problem of knowledge and the Real, then, is the
question which Epistemology has to face. As stated by
Professor Huxley, and indeed as stated in any form, it is
apt to appear fantastical and frivolous to the common-
sense mind ; but if it were so, it would hardly have
formed the central problem of modern philosophy. I
am convinced at least that unless it is probed to the
bottom, we can have no clearness as to the foundations
of knowledge and belief ; and without such clearness we
can hardly expect to make satisfactory progress in
philosophy.

LECTURE II.

THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY.

THE problem of epistemology arises from the very
nature of knowledge. Knowledge implies a reference
to that which is known, and which is therefore to be
distinguished from the knowledge itself considered sub
jectively as an act or process of the being who knows.
What is known, the object of knowledge, may be styled
most generally Reality. Knowledge bears in its heart,
in its very notion, this reference to a reality distinct
from itself. No idealist will deny, at all events, that
knowledge seems to us to carry this reference with it.
Hume himself speaks of it as " the universal and primary
opinion of all men/' it is "a natural instinct or pre
supposition," 1 so that if its validity is not accepted,
the illusion will at least require explanation. Know
ledge as knowledge points beyond itself to a reality
whose representation or symbol it is. This holds true,
as a careful analysis would show, even in what is called
self-knowledge, the reflective knowledge of one's own
states, in which the act of knowledge and the object
known might seem to fall together. But, without in
sisting at the outset on this refinement, let us take the
general or typical case, in which the knowledge is know
ledge of beings other than ourselves, a knowledge of the
facts of the world around us. Here the very function of
knowledge, as ordinarily understood, is to disclose to

1 Enquiry, section 12.

184 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

one being the nature of beings and things with which he
is in relation, but which are different ; i.e., numerically
and existentially distinct from himself. One being or
individual cannot go out of himself, so far as his being
or existence is concerned. He is and remains himself so
long as he exists at all. But though every individual,
qua existent, remains thus anchored upon himself—
rooted to his own centre, to the locus, as it were, assigned
him in the process of the universal life — yet by the
influence of other realities upon him and the response
of his own being to these influences — in other words,
by means of his own subjective states, and without
therefore performing the impossible feat of stepping out
of himself — he becomes aware of other existences, or,
as we say, he comes to know that other beings or things
exist besides himself, and also what their nature is.
This knowledge, as knowledge, is necessarily subjective,'1
for no being can be present in existence within another
being. In existence things necessarily remain apart or
distinct : we can know things, therefore, only by report,
only by their effect upon us.

That, then, is the problem or crux of knowledge which
has vexed philosophers. Knowledge is necessarily sub
jective, so far as it is state or process of the knowing
being ; but it as necessarily involves an objective refer
ence. If it is not an illusion altogether, it is a knowledge
of realities which are trans-subjective or extra-conscious ;
i.e., which exist beyond and independently of the con
sciousness of the individual knowing them. But all
through the modern period philosophers have been
turning the subjectivity of knowledge against its objec
tivity, and in the last resort converting the very notion
of knowledge into an argument against the possibility
of knowledge. If they have not gone to this extreme
length, the possibility of real knowledge has been an

1 [Italics in the author's annotated copy.]

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 185

ever present difficulty to modern thought — a difficulty
that has seemed to grow greater instead of less in the
hands of successive thinkers, till it may be said since
the time of Hume and Kant to have been the main
subject of philosophical debate. Now, it can scarcely
be doubted that in this respect philosophy has largely
created the difficulties which it finds so hard to surmount,
but at the same time we cannot wonder at or regret the
time and labour expended on this question ; for it is
the business of philosophy to doubt wherever doubt is
possible, and to probe its own doubts to the bottom,
in order to discover whether they are really fatal to the
faith we repose in the act of knowledge. A theory of
knowledge or a philosophy of belief is a necessary pre
liminary of all scientific and metaphysical inquiry.

In endeavouring to establish such a theory, we must
start from the ordinary consciousness. What does the
plain man believe about perception and the real world
of physical things ? He believes that his senses, especially
sight and touch, put him in immediate relation with
real things. He has only to open his eyes or to stretch
out his hand, and he is face to face or in actual contact
with the realities themselves. The objects which he
perceives are not dependent upon his perceiving them,
which is a purely accidental fact both in their life-
history and in his. Just as he himself existed as a real
being before the act of perception, so they existed inde
pendently before he turned his eyes upon them, and
they continue to exist after his vision is averted. He
believes, in short, that he sees and touches the real
thing as that exists in itself independent of perception.
He draws no distinction between the existence of the
thing in itself and its existence for him in the moment
of perception. The appearance is the reality. ' The
vulgar," as Hume says, " confound perceptions and
objects, and attribute a distinct continued existence to

i86 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

the very things they feel or see." 1 Tis certain," he
says again, " that almost all mankind, and even philo
sophers themselves, for the greatest part of their lives,
take their perceptions to be their only objects, and
suppose that the very being, which is intimately present
to the mind, is the real body or material existence. 'Tis
also certain that this very perception or object is sup
posed to have a continued uninterrupted being, and
neither to be annihilated by our absence nor to be
brought into existence by our presence." 2

No doubt this is, as Hume says, the belief of " the
vulgar " ; it is what Mr Spencer calls Crude, and what
other writers call naive or uncritical, Realism. As such,
it contains much that is untenable, and much that
requires more careful sifting and definition. But what
we have to note is that it is a primary, instinctive and
irresistible belief of all mankind, nay of the whole animal
creation. Hume himself characterises Realism as " a
natural instinct or prepossession " which operates " with
out any reasoning or even almost before the use of
reason." 3 Even the sceptic, he says again, " must
assent to the principle concerning the existence of
body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of
philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not
left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteemed it
an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our
uncertain reasons and speculations." 4 It may be
matter for consideration at a later stage whether the
mere fact of this universal, primary and ineradicable
belief is not itself an element in the problem ; except
on the hypothesis of universal irrationality may it not
be argued that the provision of nature in this respect
is hardly likely to be a carefully organised deception ?

1 Treatise, Part IV. section 2.

2 Ibid.

3 Enquiry, section 12.

4 Treatise, Part IV. section 2.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 187

But here we are merely concerned with the fact of what
Mr Spencer calls the priority of Realism. It cannot be
too strongly insisted that in this respect Realism holds
the field. As Mr Spencer puts it, "I see no alternative
but to affirm that the thing primarily known, is not
that a sensation has been experienced, but that there
exists an outer object/' 1 Mr Spencer's position here is
not essentially different from that of Reid when he
insists in opposition to Hume that we do not start
with ideas or, as Hume calls them, perceptions — unre
lated mental states — but with judgments. Judgment,
he argues, is the primitive act of mind and a knowledge
of sensations per se is only reached at a much later stage
" by resolving and analysing a natural and original
judgment." As I put it on a previous occasion, " we
do not begin by studying the contents of our own minds
and afterwards proceed by inference to realities beyond.
We are never restricted to our own ideas, as ideas ;
from the first dawn of knowledge we treat the subjective
excitation as the symbol or revealer to us of a real
world."2

Mr Spencer, in the chapter from which I have quoted,3
gives an admirable exposure of the fallacy which under
lies the opposite view. " The error has been in con
founding two quite distinct things — having a sensation,
and being conscious of having a sensation." Certainly,
sensations must be given as the conditions of perception
or knowledge ; they are unquestionably the immediate
data upon which the perceptive judgment reposes. Mr
Spencer, it is true, guided by his idea of evolution,
projects his imagination into " the dark backward and
abysm of time " and seems to teach that " the simple
consciousness of sensation, uncomplicated by any con-

1 Principles of Psychology, Vol. ii. p. 369.

2 Scottish Philosophy, p. 103 (2nd ed.). [In the 4th ed. (p. 102),
the phrase " as ideas " is altered to " as mental states." — ED.]

3 Principles of Psychology, Part VII. Ch. 6.

188 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

sciousness of subject or object, is primordial/' and that,
as he puts it, " through immeasurably long and complex
differentiations and integrations of such primordial
sensations and derived ideas, there develops a con
sciousness of self and a correlative not-self." But, as
he adds, "it is one thing to say that in such a creature
the sensations are the things originally given, and it is
quite another thing to say these sensations can be known
as sensations by such a creature." Such an argument
" identifies two things which are at the very opposite
extremes of the process of mental evolution." It is, in
fact, only the psychologist who in his reflective analysis
is conscious of sensations as sensations distinguished
from and referred to their external causes. And we
have here an example of what Professor James has
dubbed " the psychologist's fallacy par excellence " —
the confusion by the psychologist of his own standpoint
with that of the mental fact about which he is making
his report. Mr Spencer lays his finger most effectively
upon the fallacy in the present case. But for myself,
I question whether he does not go too far in admitting
an undifferentiated sensuous consciousness as the prim
ordial fact in the evolutionary process. It is in vain
that we project our imaginations towards such a hypo
thetical beginning : it has nothing in common with what
we understand by knowledge, and is therefore perfectly
unrealisable by us. Being thus totally heterogeneous,
it cannot form a step on the road to knowledge : I mean
that it does not in any sense pave the way for it or
render the emergence of cognition easier to conceive.
Whether we interpolate this hypothetical sensuous con
sciousness as a time-prius or not, the appearance of
perception or cognitive consciousness — the conscious
ness we know — remains equally an unexplained begin
ning, an absolute fjLtrdftaa-LS et9 dXXo 76^09.

It is not an essential point in our present argument,

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 189

but I am disposed to question whether any animal con
sciousness can be fairly described as a " simple con
sciousness of sensation " — that is to say, a state of pure
internality, of diffused inward feeling, without a ger
minal consciousness of distinction between the feeling
self and its surroundings. There is no question here of
the developed or reflective1 consciousness of Ego and
non-Ego, but only of that animal awareness of objective
facts which is seen in reaction upon stimuli and in
purposive adaptation of act to circumstance. It is in
action that we have the surest clue to the early stages
of the animal and the human consciousness. Knowledge
in such creatures exists simply in a practical reference.
Consciousness would be a useless luxury unless as put
ting them in relation to the surrounding world and
enabling them to adapt their actions to its varying
stimuli. In point of fact, this practical consciousness,
so far as we can judge, accompanies animal life from
the outset. At least we cannot even imagine a con
sciousness without the objective reference — i.e., without
a felt distinction between the feeling subject and an
object which it feels — something different, of whose
presence to it it is aware. Once more let it be repeated,
we are not speaking of the reflective realisation of those
distinctions which comes so much later — which comes
to the non-human animal not at all, and to human
beings only intermittently ; we are speaking of the
instinctive or direct consciousness which all living
creatures possess (in greater or less degree) for the
practical ends of living, to enable them to respond to
external stimulus and to adapt themselves to their
surroundings. Put on this broad ground, it may be
said that the reaction of the sensitive organism is the
practical recognition of an independent object — it is
the first or earliest form which that recognition takes.

1 ["reflected" in the original. — ED.]

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

Further, there seems no reason to doubt that it is the
contrast of activity and passivity — of resistance en
countered and instinctive effort put forth against the
resistance, to which may be added the contrast of want
and satisfaction, of restless craving and the stilling of
appetite by its appropriate gratification — it is these
contrasts which awaken and intensify the distinction
between the sensitive subject and objects independent
of itself. The infant whose pains of deprivation are
ended by the presentation of the mother's breast, the
snail which puts forth its horns and comes in contact
with an object in its path,1 are alike in a fair way towards
realising the existence of independent objects. It may
be taken as pretty generally acknowledged that the
consciousness of independent externality is given chiefly
in the sense of effort and the phenomena of resisted
energy. Here we see the category of causality, as it
were, alive before us in instinctive action. Hence, as
Mr Spencer says, " the root-conception of existence
beyond consciousness becomes that of resistance plus
some force which the resistance measures/' 2 Of such
a simple quasi-reflex character are the experiences which
" yield subject and object as independent existences." 3
We do not require to go for them to the rational con
sciousness of man. In reacting upon a stimulus, the
sensitive subject projects or reflects its feeling out,
interprets it as the sign of an independent somewhat.
In this sense we may agree with Mr Spencer that " the
Realistic interpretation of our states of consciousness "
is " deep as the very structure of the nervous system,
and cannot for an instant be actually expelled " ; 4
or, as Professor Laurie puts it, the affirmation of inde
pendent externality is a necessary reflex movement of

1 An example of Professor Laurie's.

2 Principles of Psychology, Part VII. Ch. 18.

3 Ibid., Ch. 13.

4 Ibid., Ch. 14.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 191

sense. " By a reflex action of consciousness things are
constituted objects and external. This movement,
moreover, lies in the heart of consciousness ; and through
it alone is consciousness possible."1

This being so, then — Realism being incontestably prior
—philosophical reflection supervenes, and subjects this
primitive and instinctive consciousness to a sceptical
criticism, which aims either at establishing some form
of Idealism or at reducing us to complete Scepticism.
This criticism, as already remarked, is both salutary
and necessary ; for if Realism is to justify itself it must
do so at the bar of Reason : it cannot save itself by a
mere appeal to instinctive or unreasoned belief, especially
when that belief may be seen at a glance to involve a
number of unscientific and untenable assertions. Reflec
tive criticism brings to light important and undeniable
distinctions which are ignored in the primitive realistic
beliefs of the race. The philosophical thinker will avail
himself gladly of these distinctions to purge the crude
or instinctive doctrine of the unscientific elements
which bring it into discredit, while at the same time he
endeavours, in view of this idealistic criticism, to state
in an unexceptionable form the indestructible elements
of truth which he believes the original belief to contain.
In regard to this indestructible basis of truth he must
meet the criticisms of the idealist by showing that
Idealism as an epistemological doctrine only exists as a
criticism of Realism, and derives any plausibility it
possesses from the surreptitious or unobserved importa
tion into its statement of our ineradicable realistic
assumptions. Were it not for these assumptions the
idealistic theory could not be stated in words. Idealism
is really an attempt to obliterate the distinction between
knowing and being, which it finds established in common
belief and in the realistic theories. The gist of episte-

1 Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta, p. 74 (2nd ed.).

192 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

mological Idealism is that the knowing1 is the thing
known ; that being known to different consciousnesses
is the only being or existence of the object ; that
cognitive states of a number of conscious beings exist,
but that the 'it/ the object which we ordinarily suppose
these cognitive states to refer to — which we suppose to
be known by means of these cognitive states — is nothing
beyond the cognitive states themselves.2 Now on such
a theory it is pretty evident that the distinction of
Knowing and Being, of independent subject and object,
would never have arisen, and would not have required
therefore to be explained away. Hence, it may be
repeated, Idealism exists only as a criticism of Realism.
When developed itself as a substantive theory, it leads
to a view of existence which is a redmtio ad absurdum
of the doctrine in question. By such a line of argument
Realism is left in possession of the field, and a critical
or carefully guarded Realism is established as the only
satisfactory, indeed the only sane, theory of knowledge.
The considerations on which a sceptical idealism, or an
idealistic scepticism, founds are sufficiently obvious, and
by no means profound. As Hume puts it, the " universal
and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the
slightest philosophy." 3 Possibly, therefore (to adapt
Bacon's maxim), if a little philosophy inclines men's
minds to idealism, depth in philosophy may bring them
back to Realism. " The slightest philosophy teaches us,"
Hume proceeds, " that nothing can ever be present to
the mind but an image or perception, and that the
senses are only the inlets through which these images
are conveyed, without being able to produce any im
mediate intercourse between the mind and the object."

1 [state of knowing.]

2 Obviously on such a hypothesis the designation ' cognitive '
applied to the states is no longer appropriate, since they have ceased
to be the instruments of knowledge.

3 Enquiry, section 12.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 193

In other words, and to put it more modernly, the special
arguments by which idealism is enforced are drawn from
the physiology of the sense-organs. The general position
on which it rests is that, physiologically, knowledge has
for its immediate conditions certain processes in every
organism, and, psychologically, knowledge consists of
certain subjective experiences in me (whatever that may
precisely mean, some denying the me and asserting
simply the subjective experiences as such). As Hume
says, we never get " any immediate intercourse between
the mind and the object." Consciousness, as such, is
shut up to its own contents or constituents. What
transcends consciousness — i.e., any existence which is
other than consciousness cannot be in consciousness ;
albeit the ordinary naive idea seems to be that conscious
ness, as it were, goes out of itself, and actually lays hold
of things, or throws its net over them. In literal fact,
however, this is not so. The psychical experiences
which constitute knowledge are one thing, and, accord
ing to the doctrine of a Realism that understands itself,
the thing known is another. Their distinction is unde
niable, though an ill-advised Realism and an ill-advised
Idealism alike try to undermine it or to explain it away.
In fact, as we saw at the outset of this paper, the distinc
tion may be said to be involved in the very nature or
notion of knowledge. Knowledge means nothing if it
does not mean the relation of two factors, knowledge
of an object by a subject. But knowledge is not an
entity stretching across, as it were, from subject to
object, and uniting them ; still less is knowledge the
one reality of which subject and object are two sides
or aspects. Knowledge is an activity, an activo-passive
experience of the subject, whereby it becomes aware of
what is not itself. The cognitive state is thus related
psychologically to the subject whose state it is, and
epistemologically to the object of which it is the know-

N

194 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

ledge. Epistemologically there is a union of subject and
object : the knower and what he knows are in a sense, as
Aristotle says, one. But ontologically, or as a matter
of existence, they remain distinct — the one here and the
other there — and nothing avails to bridge this chasm.
The chasm, it is true, is not an absolute one, otherwise
knowledge would be forever impossible. Across the
inane there is no bridge. Both subject and object are
members of one world. That may be taken as the
ultimate and unavoidable presupposition. But separa
tion and difference are the very conditions of knowledge ;
if it were not for the difference where would be the
need of knowledge ? Each thing would actually be
everything else, or rather ' each ' would be an impossible
conception. The O/JLOV iravra of Anaxagoras would be
realised in a more intimate and literal sense than its
author ever imagined ; all things would be together, an
indistinguishable conglomerate of mutual interpenetration.
It is individuation, distinctness in existence, that calls
for knowledge and gives it scope. Feelings, images,
ideas, beliefs, volitions — these are the components of
consciousness, they have an existence of their own,
but it is a mode of existence generically distinct from
that we attribute to things as real beings, whether
material or spiritual. By means of certain of these
conscious facts — those called cognitive — the being in
whom they occur believes that he is made aware of the
existence, nature and actions of existences other than
himself. But he cannot by any possibility step out of
himself and pass over into these other existences, or draw
them into himself. In this respect Matthew Arnold's
lines are as true as they are poignantly beautiful :—

Yes ! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 195

But, as I have said, to wish to overpass these limits is
to rebel against the very nature of selfhood, and episte-
mologically to kick against the very notion of knowledge.
That very self which is a principle of isolation in exist
ence is the principle on which all communion, all fellow
ship rests, alike in knowing and in feeling. But know
ledge is not a fusion of knower and known, nor is it all
explained by being regarded as a kind of physical con
tinuity or immediate contact between the knowing
subject and the object known. Though science may
prove all perception to be dependent on the existence
of a physical medium between the object perceived and
the sense-organs, thus reducing all the senses to varieties
of touch, the psychical facts which result are yet totally
different, and as it were apart from the series of physical
movements from which they result. Physical nearness
or remoteness does not affect the epistemological ques
tion. The table which is in immediate contact with my
organism is as completely and inexorably outside the
world of my consciousness as the most distant ' star and
system ' visible upon the bosom of the night. Though
I press my hand against it, it is no more present in con
sciousness than is the friend on the other side of the
globe whose image rises at the moment in my mind.
There are in fact two worlds, and to that fundamental
antithesis we return. To the one world belong, in
Berkeley's language though not in Berkeley's sense, all
the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, to the
other the thoughts and feelings of the individual who is
consciously aware of this system of things in which he
himself draws his breath and has his place. To use
the well-worn words, there is the macrocosm and there
is the microcosm. Ontologically or metaphysically, the
microcosm must necessarily be viewed as a dependent
part or function of the mighty whole ; but epistemologic-
ally the microcosm rounds itself off within itself, and
constitutes in perfect strictness a little world of its own.

196 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

The world of consciousness, on the one hand, and the
(so far hypothetical) world of real things, on the other,
are two mutually exclusive spheres. No member of
the real sphere can intrude itself into the conscious
sphere, nor can consciousness go out into the real sphere
and as it were lay hold with hands upon a real object.
The two worlds are, to this extent and in this sense,
totally disparate.

As soon as this is clearly recognised — and as Hume
says, no very profound philosophical reflection is needed
to reach this stage — it becomes evident that Realism
cannot be maintained as a philosophical hypothesis in
the uncritical form which it assumes in the mind of the
plain man. And so far as the Realism of Scottish
philosophy is merely an uncritical reassertion of our
primitive beliefs, it is not to be wondered at that succeed
ing philosophers have so frequently treated their specula
tions as a negligible quantity. Immediacy must be given
up before any tenable theory of perception and any
philosophical doctrine of Realism can be established.
The truth of the idealistic contentions must be acknow
ledged. It must be granted that in passing from the
real to the ideal there is a solution of continuity, a leap,
a passage from one world to another. The world of
real things is transcendent with reference to the world
of consciousness ; the world of objects (as we customarily,
though ambiguously, speak of it) is trans-subjective or
extra-conscious. In other words, it falls absolutely
outside of, or beyond, the little world of consciousness,
and the conscious being cannot in the nature of things
overleap or transcend itself. The knowledge which we
call most immediate or direct is only relatively so ; so
far as it is knowledge, it is mediate, or the result of a
process. Knowledge puts a man in relation with things
through the medium of his perceptions, but his percep
tions are not the things ; he does not pass over into the

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 197

things, nor do the things pass over into him. At no
point can the real world, as it were, force an entrance
into the closed sphere of the ideal ; nor does that sphere
open at any point to receive into itself the smallest
atom of the real world, qua real, though it has room
within itself ideally for the whole universe of God.

A critical Realism must start then with the acknow
ledgment of this fact. This is the truth which both Locke
and Kant had got firm hold of. It is the basis of Locke's
hypothetical Dualism, and, so far as our present argu
ment is concerned, Kant's relativistic phenomenalism
with its inferential background of things-in-themselves
is substantially a similar theory with the sceptical
suggestions of Lockianism unfortunately emphasised.
From Locke and Kant as centres the epistemological
speculations of modern philosophy may be conveniently
viewed. Now, unquestionably, the transcendence of
the real does give scepticism its opportunity. Scepticism
takes up its position in the gap thus apparently made
between the ideal and the real, and asks how we know
that we know the real things, what assurance have we
that the world of real things is as it appears to us to be,
nay, in the last resort, what assurance have we that
there is a world of real things at all. This sceptical
insinuation requires to be fairly met, for, however little
it avails to shake our practical certainty, the theoretic
possibility of such a doubt lies in the very nature of
the case. So long as the knower and that which he
knows are not identical, so long is it possible that his
knowledge may not be true — i.e., may not correctly
render the nature of what is. Hence a succession of
attempts to dispense with the otherness or transcend
ency of the object known. Thus we find Berkeley
inveighing against this " groundless and absurd notion "
as " the very root of scepticism." 1 The arguments used
1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 86.

ig8 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

by sceptics in all ages, he says, depend on the sup
position of external objects.1 The temptation accord
ingly is to abolish the independent world of real exist
ences altogether, and to manipulate our perceptions or
ideas in such a way as to make them stand in its place.
This is the plan we find adopted by Berkeley partially,
and in more thorough-going fashion by Hume. Berkeley
and Hume have been modernised by Mill. It was this
sceptical development of Locke's " way of ideas " that
drove some Scotch philosophers to seek refuge in the
theory or no theory of Immediate Perception. By
thus putting the mind with its nose up against things
(to use a homely but graphic phrase of Von Hartmann's)
they sought to cut off the very possibility of doubt.
But this is to cut the Gordian knot in an inadmissible
way. The doubt has been raised and is plainly possible.
This is fully admitted and stated with admirable clear
ness by Hamilton, even while insisting most strenuously
upon the testimony of consciousness to a duality of
existence. " The facts of consciousness," he says, " are
to be considered in two points of view, either as evi
dencing their own ideal or phenomenal existence, or as
evidencing the objective existence of something else
beyond them. A belief in the former is not identical
with a belief in the latter. The one cannot, the other
may possibly be refused. In the case of a common
witness we cannot doubt the fact of his testimony as
emitted, but we can always doubt the truth of that
which his testimony avers. So it is with consciousness." 2
Hence to shout Immediate Perception is no reply. It
is to seek an imaginary security by shutting one's eyes
to the danger, instead of boldly facing it. A more legiti
mate method is to show the inadequacy of the idealistic
substitutes for a trans-subjective real world, to show,

1 Principles of Hitman Knowledge, section 87.

2 Lectures on Metaphysics, I. p. 271.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 199

as I said before, that it is only in virtue of their borrow
ings from Realism that they can be stated and discussed.
This indirect proof, proceeding by the exclusion of other
possible theories, is declared by Hartmann *• to be the
only way in which a critical Realism can be firmly estab
lished ; or, to put it otherwise, the doubt must be
redargued by showing its ultimate scope. This is to a
certain extent what Reid does, and it is in his criticisms
of the ideal theory conceived in this spirit, and not in
his dogmatic assertion of immediate perception, that we
must recognise his philosophical merit and his philoso
phical importance.

1 See his Kritische Gvundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus, and
his Grundproblem der Erkenntnisstheorie, passim.

LECTURE III.

EPISTEMOLOGY IN LOCKE AND KANT.

LOCKE'S hypothetical Realism or problematical Dualism
is, as such, a sounder theory than the vastly more acute
and subtle theories of his critics. But in Locke's hands
the theory is stated in such a way that Berkeley and
Hume become logical necessities ; if they had not
existed, it would have been necessary to invent them.
Locke's rudimentary psychology, his inextricable com
mingling of psychological, epistemological and meta
physical questions, are mainly to blame for this. Above
all must be signalised the atomic sensationalism which
he places in the forefront of his theory, though he him
self is the last man to abide consistently by it. Readers
of Green's massive Introduction to Hume will remember
the constantly reiterated criticism that Locke habitually
uses idea or simple idea as equivalent to " idea of a thing."
The simple idea, says Green, is thus represented as
involving a theory of its own cause ; it is not a mere
sensation, but the idea of a quality of a thing ; it is
referred to a permanent real world of which it is repre
sentative or symbolic. Beyond doubt this is precisely
what Locke does. One has only to open the Essay to
find Locke continually passing from the one order of
phrases to the other. " The senses/' he says, " let in
particular ideas " and furnish the yet empty cabinet ; but
Locke says with equal readiness they " convey into the

202 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

mind, several distinct perceptions of things." The
particular ideas bare of all reference, a drip, drip of dis
continuous sensations, so many present existences in
consciousness, each testifying to itself alone, are trans
formed without a qualm into " ideas of things without."
Locke apparently does not see the difference between
the two sets of statements. But if the difference is
ignored in Locke, we find it explicitly denied by Hume
that there is any difference : 'To form the idea of an
object and to form an idea simply is the same thing ;
the reference of the idea to the object being an ex
traneous denomination, of which in itself it bears no
mark or character."1 Green, I take it, does not mean
that Locke was wrong in taking up this second position,
and in beginning his theory of knowledge, not with a
simple idea of sensation — a mere sensation — but with
a judgment in which a causal reference and the dis
tinction of self and not self are implicit. Green's point
is that Locke on his own avowed principles is not entitled
to the second and sounder position, a position which may
be shown to involve many consequences which no sen-
sationalistic philosophy can admit. Green seeks to pin
Locke down to his sensationalistic formulae, interpreted
with the utmost rigour of the law, in the light of Hume's
deductions, whereas it is apparent on every page of the
Essay that Locke never dreamt of their bearing such a
meaning. Hence it is that Green is less than just to
Locke and deals only with his inconsistencies. Professor
Campbell Eraser's reconstruction is far truer to his
spirit and intentions. In truth Green's interest is not
with Locke's theory as a \vhole, but with English sen
sationalism as that first disclosed its features in certain
definitions and statements of the Essay. Locke's first
way of stating the case implies that false substantiation
of the bare particulars of sense which issued in the

1 Treatise, I. p. 327 (Green's edition).

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 203

agnostic sensational atomism of Hume. It leads directly
to the ideal theory and the so-called doctrine of repre
sentative perception in the objectionable form in
which it is attacked by Reid. "It is evident," says
Locke, " the mind knows not things immediately, but
only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them/'
So far he is on perfectly safe ground, except that the
word ' intervention ' has already a subtle suggestio falsi.
But the formula which Locke places at the very opening
of Book IV. (and which therefore naturally takes a
prominent place in the mind of the student as deter
mining the sense of what follows) is far from being equally
unobjectionable ; though the difference may seem so
slight as to be almost imperceptible, and the danger
that lurks in it is probably only apparent to us in the
light of subsequent events. " Since the mind," says
Locke, " in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no
other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone
does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge
is only conversant about them." — So, again, in the open
ing of Chapter II., he repeats that all our knowledge con
sists " in the view the mind has of its own ideas." Now
it is one thing to say that the mind knows things only by
the intervention or by means of the ideas it has of them,
and another thing to say that ideas constitute the " im
mediate object " of the mind, and that " our knowledge
is only conversant about " ideas. The last is so far
from being true that it might be more correct to say
that our knowledge is never conversant about ideas —
ideas never constitute the object of the mind at all—
unless in the reflective analysis of the psychologist.
Otherwise, our knowledge is always conversant about
realities of some kind ; to say that we know by means
of ideas is simply to say that we know ; but ideas are
naught except as signs of a further reality, and from the
first they are taken not per se, but in this symbolic

204 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

capacity. As Locke himself puts it in his excellent
chapter on the Reality of Human Knowledge, " It is
the knowledge of things that is only to be prized. . . .
If our knowledge of our ideas terminate in them and
reach no farther . . . our most serious thoughts will be
of little more use than the reveries of a crazy brain/' —
Locke's shifting statements show us, indeed, " the
psychologist's fallacy " in full blast. If we once yield
ourselves to his first line of thought ; if we admit a
start from ideas per se, a custom-woven, private, ideal
phantasmagoria will be our only substitute for the
common or objective world of real persons and things.
We get a theory of Representative Perception that is
totally indefensible ; the ideas are taken as really
intervening between the mind and things ; the mechanism
of knowledge is converted into an elaborate means of
defeating its own purpose. It becomes a tertium quid, a
kind of screen which effectually shuts off the knower from
what he desires to know. We are supposed, first, to
know the ideas on their own account as mental states
or mental entities, and subsequently, by a process of
conscious inference, to refer them to real causes and
archetypes. If knowledge at any stage did terminate
thus in the ideas themselves, it is difficult to see either
what considerations could suggest to us the step beyond
their charmed circle or on what grounds it could be
justified. This is in fact the point of the idealistic and
sceptical criticism which Berkeley and Hume brought
to bear upon Locke's hypothetical Realism. Berkeley,
as Green puts it, tries to avoid Locke's inconsistencies by
dropping the reference to transcendent real objects
altogether : for idea of an object he deliberately sub
stitutes idea simply. To him the ideas are the objects,
sensible things are clusters or collections of ideas-
actual and possible perceptions of intelligent beings.
" The table I write on exists, that is, I see and feel it ;

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 205

and if I were out of my study, I should say it existed —
meaning thereby that, if I was in my study, I might
perceive it or that some other spirit actually does per
ceive it." In his recurring phrase, the being of things
"is to be perceived or known," or, as he puts it even
more strikingly, " the object and the sensation are the
same thing." " An idea can be like nothing but an
idea " and the supposition of independent originals of
our ideas is gratuitous. " If there were external bodies,
it is impossible we should ever come to know it." The
supposition of such bodies is, in short, not only " ground
less and absurd," but " is the very root of scepticism ;
for so long as men thought that real things subsisted
without the mind, and that their knowledge was only
so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it
follows that they could not be certain that they had
any real knowledge at all. For how can it be known
that the things which are perceived are conformable to
those which are not perceived, or exist without the
mind ? " 1 As Hume clinched the matter afterwards :
The mind has never anything present to it but the
perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience
of their connection with objects. Hence Berkeley pro
ceeds, " All this sceptical cant follows from our supposing
a difference between things and ideas. . . . The argu
ments urged by sceptics in all ages depend on the sup
position of external objects."2 He is resolved himself
to make a clear riddance of all such sceptical cant. On
Berkeley's principles there is no opening for doubt
either as to the existence of a real world or as to the
truth of our knowledge of it, because the knowledge,
the immediate conscious fact, is the existence and (along
with a possibility of similar conscious facts) the whole

1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 86. [Also sections 3-8
and 20. — ED.]

2 Ibid., section 87.

206 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

of the existence. ' That what I see, hear and feel doth
exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, I no more doubt
than I do of my own being." Unquestionably not, for
if existence be understood in this sense, the two facts
are simply identical. Doubt cannot touch the existence
of a present feeling while it is being felt. But if I thus
reduce the existence of a permanent external world to
unreferred feelings, Hume is, of course, at hand to
apply the same argument to " my own being " which
Berkeley here and elsewhere treats as a fundamental
certainty. These same perceptions or ideas whose
presence in consciousness I have asserted to be the
existence of sensible things, constitute the evidence of
my own existence : in fact they are my existence. As
Berkeley himself says, ' ' the duration of any finite spirit
must be measured by the number of ideas or actions
succeeding each other in that same spirit or mind ; . . .
and in truth whoever shall go about to divide in his
thoughts or abstract the existence of a spirit from its
cogitation will, I believe, find it no easy task/' x My
own being, in fact, as something more than the existence
of my present conscious states, will be found by a sound
philosophy to rest ultimately on a process of rational
construction substantially similar to that which estab
lishes the existence of an independent object of know
ledge. Hence an Idealism or Spiritualism which does
not guarantee the rights of the object is a lop-sided theory
which has no defence against the further inroads of its
own logic. Put forward as a short and easy method with
the sceptics, Berkeleianism only preluded to the sceptical
nihilism of Hume.

Humianism, so far as that is necessary to our argument,
may best be dealt with in the modernised version of Mill.
But before doing so, it will be instructive to trace the
very similar process of criticism by which the realistic

1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 98.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 207

elements were eliminated from the original theory of
Kant, and we shall see how their elimination leads to
similar sceptical results.

It is important to observe that Kant's starting-point
is a hypothetical dualism in many respects similar to
that of Locke. Our knowledge refers to things which
are other than our knowledge and may be said, in that
sense, to lie beyond it. This further reference (which
we have some reason to believe essential to the very
nature of knowledge) Kant certainly starts with ; and
whatever results his theory leads him to as regards the
kind of knowledge we have of things, he never loses hold
of what he calls the thing-in-itself as that which alone
gives meaning to the cognitive effort. Our knowledge
of things may be imperfect and coloured by the infusion
of subjective elements, but if there were no ' things-in-
themselves,' the whole process of knowledge would be a
completely unmotived excursion into the void. Hence,
as Kant puts it in the Preface to the second edition of
the Critique, with his whole system explicitly in view,
" while we surrender the power of cognising, we still
reserve the power of thinking objects as things-in-
themselves. For otherwise we should require to affirm
the existence of an appearance without anything that
appears — which would be absurd." In other words,
our cognitions may be Erscheinungen, merely pheno
menal, but as phenomena — as cognitions — they imply
real objects, of which they are the cognitions. It is, of
course, the peculiarity of the Kantian scheme, that our
knowledge is so organised as to defeat its own purpose
and cut us off from a knowledge of things as they really
are. So far as our knowledge of it is concerned, the
thing-in-itself shrinks, therefore, for Kant into a mere
unknown somewhat ; but in that capacity it remains
as the necessary presupposition of the knowing process.

208 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

It would be superfluous to multiply quotations in
support of a position which even those who try to
explain it away must admit to have been held by Kant.
I will, therefore, quote only one typical passage from
the Prolegomena in which he elaborately distinguishes
his own doctrine from that of Idealism : —

" Idealism consists in the assertion that there are no
other than thinking beings ; that the other things which
we believe ourselves to perceive are only ideas in thinking
beings — ideas to which in fact there is no correspondent
object outside of or beyond the thinking beings. I, on
the contrary, say, Things are given to us as objects of
our senses, external to us ; but of what they may be
in themselves we know nothing, knowing only their
appearances — that is, the ideas which they cause in us
by affecting our senses. Accordingly I certainly admit
that they are bodies external to us — that is, things which,
although wholly unknown to us as regards what they
may be in themselves, we yet know through the ideas
which their influence upon our sensibility supplies us
with, and to which we give the appellation body : which
word signifies, therefore, only the appearance of that to
us unknown, but not the less real, object. Can this be
called Idealism ? Surely it is precisely the opposite."
He declares roundly elsewhere " that it never entered
his head to doubt the existence of independent things
(Sacheri)." Kant (in the passage quoted and elsewhere)
assumes independent things not only as existent, but
as the trans-subjective cause of our sense-affections.
How else, he says, could the knowing faculty be roused
to exercise, if not by objects which affect our senses ?
The position is to Kant so much a matter of course that
he does not stop to argue it. And so it remained to the
end. To interpret such statements as preliminary or
provisional on Kant's part is completely unwarranted.
If they had been a piece of exoteric condescension or

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 209

accommodation to the untrained minds of his readers —
if he had been merely educating these readers up to a
point of view which would transform their whole con
ception of the universe and render the thing-in-itself an
unnecessary adjunct — then Kant must have given us
some hint at least of this pedagogic use of language,
instead of leaving such expressions staring at us from
page after page of his works in a perfectly unqualified
way. They appear not only in works written while
he is supposed to have been working his way towards
his own deeper view, but are to be found quite as un
ambiguously in writings composed long after his whole
scheme lay clearly outlined before his mind. A few
statements J may certainly be pointed to, mostly obscure
in their drift and phraseology, which, if they stood by
themselves, might be interpreted in an idealistic sense.
But when they have to be placed against the mass of
counter-evidence — the numberless explicit assertions of
the realistic position and the vehement disclaimers of
Idealism — which may be quoted from Kant's writings,
it is manifest that the Idealism that seems to the eyes
of later-born critics to shimmer in the words was not
present to Kant in writing them, and that, whatever
their meaning may be, an interpretation must be sought
not inconsistent with the fundamental Realism of the
authentic Kantian philosophy, whether that is for
mulated in the first edition or the second, in the Pro
legomena or in Kant's express statements in later years.
Of these last I will only refer to his rejoinder to Eber-
hardt in 1790, the year of the Critique of Judgment, and
his public declarations in regard to Fichte and his

1 The chief passages that seem opposed to a realistic interpretation
occur in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena in the first Critique ;
but Kant is there speaking in another reference. He is speaking not
of the existence of things-in-themselves, but of a non-sensuous in
tuition of them. Besides, his subsequent declarations are sufficient
to show that they are not intended to throw doubt on the existence
and causal activity of things-in-themselves.

O

2io BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

system in the year 1799. Publicly invited by Fichte
to disclarpf the derivation of sensation from the impres
sion of things-in-themselves, the aged philosopher
hastened to disown the Fichtean idealism which he
characterised in the newspaper as a pure logic from
which it was a vain hope ever to extract a real object.
The Wissenschaftslehre, he had said in a letter to a
friend the year before, impressed him " like a kind of
ghost." ' The mere self-consciousness, or, to be more
correct, the mere form of thought without matter-
consequently without the reflection having anything
before it to which it could be applied — makes a queer
impression upon the reader. When you think you are
going to lay hold on an object, you lay hold on yourself
instead ; in fact the groping hand grasps only itself."

It may seem strange that a system with such a firm
realistic basis should have been the parent of so many
idealisms, whether we look to the constructive Idealism
of his immediate successors, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel,
to English Neo-Hegelianism or to the sceptical and
positivistic idealism of many German Neo-Kantians.
But the reason is not far to seek. If Kant starts from,
or implies throughout, a hypothetical dualism of the
Lockian type, he likewise accepts in the most unqualified
way the doctrine which we found in Locke and Hume
of the subjectivity of knowledge — the necessary limita
tion of the mind to its own ideas. This doctrine we
saw to be true in what it affirms ; it forms, indeed, the
first step in philosophical reflection. Consciousness
cannot, in the realm of fact or existence, pass beyond
itself ; its own states are, therefore, all that is im
mediately present to or in the mind. But if it be forth
with concluded from this, that it is impossible by means
of certain facts in my consciousness indirectly to reach,
or in other words to know, a world of other facts beyond
my consciousness, we are arguing with more haste than

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 211

caution. The two propositions, at all events, do not
mean the same thing. That knowledge is, and must be,
a subjective process is not of itself sufficient to discredit
its results and stamp its efforts in advance as unavailing.
Yet historically the two statements are generally found
together, as if they were two sides of the same truth :
knowledge is subjective, therefore it can never give us
the object as it really is. So it was with Hume, and so
it is with Kant.

By Kant the position is not usually stated quite so
broadly. He does not usually say in so many words
that, because knowledge is subjective, it can bring us no
true report of real objects. To Kant it is the sensuous
or receptive character of our perception that invalidates
it. Our perception is derivative ; it depends for its
matter upon an affection of our sensibility by the object.
This is what Kant constantly emphasises as stamping
our knowledge with phenomenality. Sensations are
subjective affections which nowise express or reveal the
nature of the object but only its relation to us. As the
sun melts wax (to use an example of Locke's), so the
thing produces a certain effect upon my sensibility :
I am internally modified in a certain way. But such a
modification of my nature, however it may be set up in
me by the thing, cannot possibly reveal the nature of
the thing as it is in itself. In Kant's own words, we
know " only the mode in which our senses are affected
by an unknown something " (Werke, IV. 63). " Sup
posing us to carry our empirical perception even to the
very highest degree of clearness, we should not thereby
advance a step nearer to a knowledge of the constitution
of objects as things-in-themselves. For we could only,
at best, arrive at a complete cognition of our own mode
of perception, that is, of our sensibility " (III. 73).
" It is incomprehensible," he explains elsewhere (IV. 31),
" how the perception even of a present object should

212 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

give me a knowledge of that thing as it is in itself,
seeing that its properties cannot migrate or wander
over (hiniiberwandern) into my presentative faculty.'-

This is further emphasised by the contrast, which
Kant again and again recurs to, between our sensuous
or receptive intelligence (intdlectus ectypus, derivatives)
and a creative, or as he otherwise terms it, a perceptive
understanding (intellectus archetypus, originarius). The
latter, he explains in the celebrated letter to Marcus
Herz, must be conceived as all activity or spontaneity ;
its ideas, therefore, will have creative efficiency. They
will not be passively related to foreign objects ; they
will themselves be the objects, and such a being's know
ledge would, of course, be entirely a priori, as the world
known would be entirely self-produced. In complete
contrast with such an intelligence, we may conceive a
being entirely passive or recipient in its relation to the
object. In this case, the ideas of the subject would be
altogether empirical or a posteriori, due to piecemeal
communication from the side of the object. And, as
we have already heard Kant say, they would in such a
case give only the way in which the subject is affected
by the object — only certain ' passions ' or sensuous
modifications of the subject, accompanied by a causal
reference to an (otherwise unknown) object.

Now, according to Kant, the human mind is neither
purely active nor purely passive ; human knowledge is
a compound of receptivity and spontaneity. Kant
assumes, on the evidence of mathematics and pure
physics, that part of our knowledge possesses univer
sality and necessary validity, and, as universality and
necessity cannot be yielded by sense, that the principles
of such knowledge must be a priori, drawn in the act of
knowledge from the nature of the mind itself. Hence it
comes that the crucial question for Kant is, Granted
these a priori principles, these notions of the under-

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 213

standing, how can they apply to objects which are given
independently of them ? If our mode of perception were
intellectual or spontaneous throughout, creating its
objects whole (both form and matter), there would, of
course, be no such difficulty. But our perception being
sensuous, dependent for its matter upon foreign objects
that exist in their own right, what guarantee have we
that ideas which have their source in the mind may be
validly applied to independent objects ? To the question
as thus put there is but one answer — we have no guarantee
at all. Kant's way out of the difficulty, therefore, was,
in effect, to renounce the attempt to know the real
objects and to rest content with the subjective modifica
tions of his own sensibility. That these a posteriori
subjective affections should range themselves under the
a priori forms of sense and understanding no longer
presents any difficulty ; on the contrary, it is obvious
that the structure of the mind must impress itself on
whatever it receives into itself. This fusion of a priori
and a posteriori elements yields us the so-called objects
of sense — the subjective objects, the phenomena or
appearances in us — to which Kant applies the term ex
perience, and to which he limits the scope of our cognition.
It will be seen from what has been said that it was
not primarily the subjective origin of the a priori prin
ciples that led Kant to pronounce our knowledge merely
phenomenal. It is rather to our sensuous or receptive
attitude in cognition that the phenomenalistic taint is
due. It is due to this fundamental characteristic of
human intelligence, rather than to any defect inherent
in themselves, that the categories are strictly limited to
a phenomenal or subjective world ; they are empty,
as Kant says, without the filling of sense. But though
Kant's phenomenalism has thus its roots in his view of
the a posteriori even more than in his account of the
a priori, his theory of the a priori is unquestionably

214- BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

what gives his system its distinctive character. But for
mathematics and physics and Hume's sceptical analysis
of necessary truth, Kant might have remained content
with a theory like Locke's. Locke gives a substantially
similar account of a posteriori knowledge, but the scep
tical implications of ' the theory of ideas ' have not yet
developed themselves. The connection is closer between
the ideas and their real causes or prototypes — which
Locke, indeed, believes them faithfully to represent, so
far at least, as the primary qualities are concerned. The
elaboration of the a priori element by Kant, and the
prominence given to it in the constitution of the so-
called object of sense, inevitably widens the gulf between
ideas and things, between the phenomenon and the
thing-in-itself. The phenomenal object, drawing so
many of its determinations from the subject, becomes
detached from the object whose appearance it is sup
posed to be, but which, be it observed, it no longer
represents. It becomes a satellite of the mind, a mental
object. And eventually, under cover of the ambiguous
terms ' object ' and ' experience/ it assumes a quasi-
independence of the mind also, and is then ready to do
duty for the real things of science and common life.

We need not wonder, then, that in the course of the
exposition, the thing-in-itself, the transcendent cause of
our experience, falls into the background. It falls into
the background not because it is any the less supposed
to be there, but because Kant is not interested in the
particular matter of sense of which it is the source and
explanation. He is altogether absorbed in vindicating,
in view of Hume, the universal and necessary elements
of experience. He has to show how by the aid of certain
mentally supplied principles of synthesis — and only by
their aid — the discontinuous and unconnected particu
lars of sense are worked up into ' experience-objects,'
and, generally, into an experience-cosmos in space and

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 215

time. The deduction or exposition of this a priori
system may be said to constitute Kant's whole industry
in the Critique. The a posteriori element, though equally
necessary to experience as a living fact, he is content
to refer to simply as given — given from another source,
as he says somewhat curtly in the press of his investiga
tion into the a priori. The infrequency of reference to
this other source is the less to be wondered at, seeing
that the thing-in-itself had become attenuated, under
the influence of Kant's presuppositions, into no more
than the unknown cause or correlate of our sense-
impressions — " a notion so imperfect," according to
Hume, " that no sceptic will think it worth while to
contend against it." 1 As nothing could be said of the
sense-matter until it was formed, the thing-in-itself
seemed merely to furnish the prick of sense that set the
a priori machinery in motion. Kant himself says in
the Aesthetic, with a kind of naive triumph, that the
thing-in-itself is never asked for in experience. In
short it is completely obscured, and its place practically
taken, by the subjective or experience-object which
Kant constructs, and which he interposes, as it were,
between us and it.

It is high time, therefore, to inquire narrowly into the
nature of this ' experience ' which tends to swallow up
everything else in Kant, and which, in the mouths of
his more recent followers, becomes a magic and all-
sufficing formula.

Experience is distinguished, on the one hand, from
mere sensation. Kant holds, and rightly holds, that
from particular impressions of passive sensation alone
no knowledge could possibly arise. These sensations,
if they exist, are unknowable ; they become elements
of knowledge only when actively seized and rationally
interpreted by the mind. Knowledge implies, besides

1 Enquiry, section 12.

2i6 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

the stimulus of sense, a nucleus of primitive judgments,
which involve the basal category of cause and ultimately
the whole structure of reason. If, therefore, sensation,
or the sense-stimulus, be styled subjective or merely
subjective, then the cognitions or perceptions * which
are thus constituted out of the impressions by the
a priori resources of the mind may be said to be, in
comparison, objective — that is to say, they are not
merely internal states of the subject, indistinguishably
fused, as it were, in its inner life ; they are objects or
presentations which have a relative permanence, and
which may be contemplated, so to speak, at arm's
length. They are objective, however, only as thus
compared with sensations (which may be hypothetically
denned as the states of a being in which the contrast
of subject and object has not emerged, and for which
consequently the fact of knowledge does not yet exist).
In themselves, as perceptions, they are still subjective,
still modes of my consciousness. Their objectivity is
an immanent or subjective objectivity, as compared
with the transcendent or trans-subjective objectivity of
independently existing things. Indeed, to call them ob
jects is perhaps to invite misconception. These pheno
menal objects are more probably described as percepts,
and no percept carries me, so far as its own existence is
concerned, beyond the ring-fence of the self. Whatever
reference to a trans-subjective world my percepts may
carry with them, they are, as percepts, in me ; they are
my ideas, in the wide Lockian sense of the word, my Vor-
stellungen, as Kant so often says. Adopting the favourite
Kantian expression, we might say that experience, just
because it is experienced, is eo ipso a subjective fact.
Mediately, of course, my experience is the only means
I possess of passing beyond my individual subjectivity

1 Kant's distinction between cognitions and perceptions is not here
in point.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 217

to the trans-subjective universe of other men and
things. But in its immediacy, as a fact of consciousness
doubt of which is impossible, it cannot bridge the gulf
between the subjective and the trans-subjective. The
sceptical question would never have been asked, if trans-
subjective reality were already present — immediately
present in the heart of consciousness. But it is presuming
too much upon the ambiguity of words to ask us to
accept the immanent object as actually being the tran
scendent object — the real thing. The subjective object
is certainly, like faith, the evidence of that trans-
subjective world. It is, we may hold, the substantial
and sufficient evidence, but the one is not the other.
If the one were the other, doubt, as I have said, would
be impossible and to lead evidence would be ridiculous.
Hence when Kant argues, as he so often does, that his
system is immeasurably superior to the problematical
Idealism of most philosophers, his speech bewrayeth
him. His very insistence on the fact that, in his system,
doubt of the existence of material things is impossible —
that he is as certain of the existence of objects in space
as he is of any fact of the internal sense — -only proves
that these material things in space are simply my
spatially arranged perceptions. Space and all its con
tents, as he is so fond of saying, are only phenomena of
my consciousness, only ideas in me. Kant's immediately
known real things in space recall, in fact, Berkeley's
very similar protestations that he is placing reality upon
a firmer basis than ever before. Others may doubt
whether matter exists or not ; for his part, he has
immediate certainty on the point. Berkeley plainly
availed himself in this of something like a double entendre ;
he endeavoured to substitute the perception, or the
object immediately present to consciousness, for the
trans-subjective real of which it is the perception. But
the trans-subjective to which all subjective facts refer

218 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

is not thus to be got rid of. Berkeley restores it in another
form ; Hume himself, in the Enquiry, seems inclined to
leave it standing in the attenuated form of " a certain
unknown, inexplicable something " ; and in this shape
it is retained by Kant as the thing-in-itself. For the
counterstroke of all this somewhat mystifying talk on
Kant's part about real things in space is his reminder
that these objects are, after all, only phenomena in
consciousness. Their reality is only empirical ; and as
the only empirical reality of which we can intelligibly
speak is the process as it passes in my consciousness or
yours, Kant stands practically on the same ground as
Berkeley. The only difference between Berkeley's ideas
of sense and Kant's empirically real phenomena lies in
Kant's more adequate account of space and of the
intellectual elements involved in perception. This dif
ference is, of course, fundamental, and Kant's analysis
may probably be used so as to make subjective idealism
definitely untenable ; but in such Kantian passages as
those to which I have referred, it does not lift us at all
beyond the Berkeleian standpoint.

I have just said that the only sense in which we can
intelligibly speak of empirical reality is to designate the
process as it passes in my consciousness or yours. But
does Kant always use empirical reality and experience
(Erfahrimg) in this sense ? Certainly he sometimes
does, and perhaps always intended to do so — though
good intentions cannot be credited in philosophy. In
addition to many incidental statements, emphasising
the subjective character of these so-called objects, refer
ence may be made to a passage which has all the appear
ance of being a carefully weighed official declaration on
the subject. I mean the sixth section of the Antinomy
of Pure Reason, where Kant, according to the title,
brings forward his " transcendental idealism as the key

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 219

to the solution of the cosmological dialectic." Here
Kant repeats a great number of times and in the most
explicit fashion this purely subjective and individualistic
interpretation of experience. " It has been sufficiently
proved in the Aesthetic," he says, " that everything which
is perceived in space and time — all objects, therefore, of
our possible experience — are nothing but phenomena,
that is, mere ideas, which, as represented, that is to
say, as extended beings or series of changes, have no
self-subsistent existence beyond our thoughts. . . . The
realist in a transcendental sense makes out of these
modifications of our sensibility self-subsisting things —
makes mere ideas, consequently, into things in them
selves." But for transcendental idealism " space itself
and time and all phenomena are not in themselves
things. They are nothing but ideas, and cannot exist
at all beyond our mind (ausser unserem Gemuth). . . .
That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although
no man has ever perceived them, must certainly be
allowed ; but that only means that we might meet with
them in the possible progress of experience ; for every
thing is real that stands in one context with a percep
tion according to laws of empirical progress. They are
real, therefore, if they stand in an empirical connection
with my actual consciousness, although that does not
make them real in themselves, that is, apart from this
progress of experience. . . . There is nothing really
given us except the perception and the empirical progress
from this perception to other possible perceptions. For
in themselves phenomena, as mere ideas, are real only
in perception, and perception is in fact nothing but the
reality of an empirical idea, that is, a phenomenon.
To call a phenomenon a real thing before it is perceived
means either that in the progress of experience we must
meet with such a perception, or it means nothing at all.

220 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

. . . Phenomena are not anything in themselves but
mere ideas, which when they are not given to us (in
perception) are not met with anywhere at all."

This elaborate passage might be reinforced by many
emphatic expressions on Kant's part to the same effect.
Thus he warns us that " all objects without exception
with which we busy ourselves are in me, that is, deter
minations of my identical self." He speaks of the mind
as prescribing laws a priori to nature, and of nature as
submitting to the legislation of the understanding ; but
he smooths the paradox for us by reminding us that
" this nature is in itself nothing but a sum of phenomena,
consequently not a thing-in-itself but only a number of
ideas in my mind (eine Menge von Vorstellungen des
Gemuths) . " In such passages there is no mistaking Kant's
meaning ; even in his phraseology he recalls Berkeley
and Mill, except that for associated sensations we have
rationally constructed perceptions. Otherwise Kant's
phenomenal world of present perceptions and possible
perceptions corresponds exactly to Mill's world of actual
sensations and permanent possibilities of sensation or
Berkeley's world of actual and possible sense-phenomena.
The recurring phrase of the Critique, " possible experi
ence," is itself significant of the affinity of standpoint.
It may be observed also that when this view is firmly
held, as in the long section quoted from the Dialectic,
" the non-sensuous cause of these ideas " " the tran
scendental object " —reappears, as if Kant, like Berkeley,
found it necessary to give a permanent background to
what would otherwise be too palpably a flickering,
intermittent and disconnected existence in the shape of
experiences of this or the other individual consciousness.

But it is equally certain that, at other times, the
non-sensuous cause falls into the background with Kant,
and he speaks of the phenomenal objects in a way that
ill accords with the purely subjective existence which is

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 221

all he here allows them. Kant has told us himself that
material objects, or the phenomena of the external
sense, " have this deceptive characteristic about them
that, as they represent objects in space, they detach
themselves, as it were, from the soul, and appear to
hover outside of it " — " although (as he proceeds) space
itself in which they are perceived is nothing but an
idea, whose counterpart is not to be met with in the
same quality outside of the soul." l In spite of this
caveat about the subjectivity of space, it is impossible
to read the Critique carefully without becoming aware
that this deceptive characteristic of our spatial percep
tions — this subtle detachment of themselves from con
sciousness — has its influence upon Kant himself. Kant
does not habitually think of his phenomenal objects as
merely subjective experiences, a moment here then
gone, till a similar experience occurs in my own or in
some other human subjectivity. He talks with some
scorn of those who " hypostatise ideas and transfer
them outside of themselves as real things," 2 but he may
easily be shown to fall under his own censure. It is
already dangerous to speak, as he does in the Aesthetic,
of ideas as having external things for their objects,
when the true state of the case, on the Kantian theory,
is that the ideas — i.e., our spatial perceptions — are the
external things. So, a few pages later, he defines our
perception as the idea or representation of phenomenon
(Anschauung = Vorstellung von Erscheinung), where the
perception is not identified with the phenomenon, but
is said to be a perception of it, as if the phenomenon
existed independently of the conscious process. Such
questionable expressions might be quoted in large
numbers, but that is the less necessary, seeing that the
fallacy is traceable to the leading determinations of his

1 Werke, III. 608 (ed. Hartenstein) .

2 Ibid., p. 611.

222 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

own scheme in the Analytic. It is in the Analytic that
the ambiguous use of the terms ' object ' and ' objective/
to which reference has been made, reaches its height-
one consequence of which is that the real thing to which
reference is made in knowledge is temporarily shouldered
out of the system. We are told that objects are made
by the superinduction of the categories and the forms
of intuition upon the matter of sense. Such objects, it
is true, are still phenomenal or purely subjective-
subjective matter of sense shot through with subjective
forms of thought — but they are insensibly thought of
as having a permanence which does not belong to the
come-and-go of our subjective experiences ; we are led
to regard them, not as individual perceptions of indi
vidual subjects, but as objects valid or existent for all.
This idea of objectivity as universal validity — validity
for all human beings or for consciousness in general-
becomes of determining importance for the Kantian
thought, and in it all the ambiguities of the system
meet.

Recognition by other consciousnesses, it may be freely
admitted, is an all-important test of trans-subjective
reality. That which is recognised by others certifies
itself to me as an objective or trans-subjective fact, not
a subjective fancy. The recognition is a decisive ratio
cognoscendi of its independent existence, but, conversely,
it is the existence of a trans-subjective reality that is
the ratio essendi of the recognition. That, at any rate,
is the only hypothesis which can be got to work with
more than superficial plausibility. Because an inde
pendent fact exists, everybody recognises it ; but no
multiplication of subjective recognitions can in them
selves manufacture a real object in any other than a
Berkeleian sense. To Kant, however, by the help of
this conception of validity, the phenomenal object

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 223

acquires a quasi-independence ; it seems to become
more than the actual and possible subjective experiences
of individual conscious beings — something of which the
individuals have ideas, and to which their ideas must
conform. Erfahrung, or experience, a term which should
expressly emphasise the subjectivity, comes to signify
for Kant, perhaps unconsciously, a stable and connected
world of things, identified neither with the intermittent
cognitions of individual subjects on the one hand nor
with the admittedly trans-subjective world of things-in-
themselves on the other. Sometimes, as in the passages
already quoted, Kant rouses himself and emphatically
declares that this world of experience is only " a play
of ideas " in us ; but at other times he clothes it with
all the permanence and independence which the ordinary
man attributes to real things. And when he says that
no inquiry is made in experience after the trans-subjective
reality, that is true only because he has virtually installed
the phenomenal object in its place. If the phenomenal
object were consistently understood as the percept or
cognition of an individual subject, it would be absurd
to say that in experience we rest content with that ; its
dependent and explanation-craving character would be
too apparent.

It need hardly be added that there is no justification
for the intermediate position of quasi-independence in
sinuated by Kant. The object of consciousness in general,
or the social object, is in itself a pure abstraction. It
expresses an agreement in content between a number
of cognitions which, as far as they are real facts, exist
in as many numerically distinct consciousnesses. There
is no ' consciousness in general/ and consequently its
object cannot be an existent entity but only an ens
rationis. But although this seems tolerably plain when
thus stated, it is beyond question that Erfahrung or the

224 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

world of phenomena which plays such an important
part in Kantian literature is a hybrid conception due
largely to the ambiguity of the words object and objective
which has just been explained. The development in the
hands of the Neo-Kantians of this conception of experi
ence as the exclusive reality will show us the danger of
departing from the trans-subjective reference in know
ledge. But that subject must be pursued in a separate
lecture.

LECTURE IV.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF NEO-KANTIANISM AND
SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM.

IN a preceding lecture I traced the insidious extension
given by Kant to the term ' experience/ in virtue of
which it comes to mean a quasi-independent world,
identified neither with the facts of subjective conscious
ness nor with trans-subjective realities. We have now
to follow the development of this conception of experi
ence in the hands of the Neo-Kantians. In their hands
it soon comes to figure as the exclusive reality, and the
nature of their results will show us the danger of depart
ing from the trans-subjective reference in knowledge.

In Kant, as we have seen, this reference remains, but
the experience-object thrusts the trans-subjective reality
more and more into the background. Its existence
became, therefore, the first point upon which the Kantian
system was assailed. Jacobi, Aenesidemus-Schultze,
Maimon and Beck agree in pointing out the inconsistency
of the thing-in-itself with other fundamental principles
of Kant's philosophy. Jacobi's saying is well known,
that " without the supposition of the thing-in-itself it is
impossible to find one's way into the system, and with
this presupposition it is impossible to remain in it."
For if causality is a category of subjective origin and
merely immanent application, it must be a flagrant
transgression of the first principles of Criticism to apply
it, in this transcendent reference, to the action of things-

P

226 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

in-themselves. To Fichte it was simply incredible that
Kant could ever have meant to make such an assertion ;
and accordingly he regarded the thing-in-itself as posited
by the ego — that is to say, merely as a reflection of the
ego, as a moment in the ego's own creative thought.
The development of speculative thought which im
mediately followed Kant in Germany presents, indeed,
an interesting parallel in some respects to the fate of
Lockianism in England — a parallel which may just be
alluded to in passing. If Kant with his fundamental
dualism may be regarded for a moment as a new edition
of Locke, then Fichte may be compared to Berkeley.
Like Berkeley his main polemic is against the object as
a thing-in-itself, but he leaves, or seems to leave, the
subject as a metaphysical reality and force. With
Hegel, however, the subject — " the empty ego," as he
calls it — is merged in the process of its own predicates ;
and the way in which the Hegelians of the Left sub
stantiate categories as the only real existences recalls
Hume's resolution of the universe into naked ideas.
But the Neo-Kantians belong to our own generation,
and the lesson of their speculations will, therefore, be
more instructive.

Neo-Kantianism admits the necessary reference of per
ception to a thing-in-itself, but this very reference, the
Neo-Kantians go on to say, is itself a subjective necessity.
It is a form of our thought, comparable to the necessity
we feel to employ the category of substance to unify
qualities or the category of causality to bring connection
into a world of detached objects. In like manner, the
thing-in-itself is the ultimate notion or category by
which we round off external experience. In short, Kant
has proved that the idea of the thing-in-itself or the tran
scendental object is a necessary element in experience ;
but to treat this idea as a thing is a lapse into Dogmatism
at which the Neo-Kantian holds up his hands in pious

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 227

horror. In support of this rendering of the critical
theory, several passages are adduced from Kant which,
though susceptible of an entirely different interpretation,
undoubtedly seem to favour such a view. Thus, for
example, in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena
in the first edition of the Critique, Kant speaks of " the
transcendental object " as " a something = x, of which
we know nothing at all and can know nothing (accord
ing to the present structure of our understanding), but
which can only serve as a correlate of the unity of apper
ception, to establish that unity of the manifold in sensuous
perception, by means of which the understanding unites
that manifold in the conception of an object. This
transcendental object cannot be separated from the
data of sense, because in that case nothing remains over
by which to think it. It is therefore not an object of
knowledge in itself, but only the idea of phenomena under
the conception of an object in general, which is determined
by the manifold of the phenomena." I have italicised
the most striking phrases, and it will be observed that
there is little here to distinguish the so-called " tran
scendental object " from that permanent in perception
(substantia phenomenon) which Kant proves elsewhere
to be the foundation of our experience of objects and a
correlate or reflex of the unity of apperception. The
thing-in-itself is described as the correlate of the unity
of apperception, and the functions of the two are not
distinguished. Both the unity of apperception and the
transcendental object are there " to establish a unity in
the manifold of sense-perception."

Founding on this and similar passages, and combining
them, as he believes, into a consistent meaning, Cohen
says that the transcendental object, as distinct from the
idea of the transcendental object, does not concern us
at all. Such an object would be transcendent, and in
this positive sense is to be denied. The object is called

228 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

transcendental to signify that, by the constitution of
our thinking function, it necessarily intrudes itself.
But this notion of an object-in-general which underlies,
as it were, all particular empirical objects is nothing but
the formal unity of consciousness expressing itself
through the categories, and now reflecting itself back
from the objective world of perception thus constituted.
He quotes a passage from Kant which, taken by itself,
agrees almost verbally with what he has just said :
' The pure notion of this transcendental object (which
really in all our cognitions is the same = x) is that
which in all our empirical notions is able to yield refer
ence to an object — that is, objective reality. Now this
notion can contain no definite percept, and will therefore
refer to nothing except the unity which must be met
with in a manifold of cognition, so far as it stands in
relation to an object. This reference, however, is nothing
else than the necessary unity of consciousness." x '' When
the Copernican criticism/' Cohen proceeds, " brought to
light the true movement of the object round the forms
of the mind, it disclosed at the same time the ground of
the natural phenomenon that we make the common
correlate2 our senses and our understanding into an
absolute (zum Absoluten der Natur). And this pheno
menon of our thought proves itself to be so natural that,
although it is recognised, it still retains its deceptive
power. Just as, in spite of Copernicus, the sun still
appears to the senses to move, so the transcendental
illusion of the absolute object remains, although we know
perfectly well that it radiates from the forms of our
self." " The noumenon of substance is, and is intended
to be, nothing more than the extended category (die
erweiterte Categorie)." "The object in the background,
the absolute thing-in-itself, the supposed cause of the

\

1 Deduction of the Categories in the first edition. Werke, III. 573
(ed. Hartenstein, 1867).

2 [The word " of " appears to have dropped out. — ED.]

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 229

phenomenon . . . has shown itself to be the veritable
creature of the understanding — has shown itself indeed
so veritable a creature that the illusion cannot be dis
pelled. In possible experience, that is, in constructive
perception and in the self-thought (sdbstgedachten)
notions of the understanding, lies all reality, even that
reality which would fain be more." 1 In exactly the
same spirit, Lange, who was largely influenced by Cohen,
denies that our perceptions come about through affection
of the sensibility by transcendent things-in-themselves ;
he only allows that our mental organisation is such that
it appears so to us. Our whole experience is in Lange 's
phrase, " the product of our organisation." " A judg
ment referring to the thing-in-itself has no other meaning
than to round off the circle of our ideas." 2 •

So far, however, the ego still remains as a reality — a
bearer or supporter of this subjective world of experience ;
or, to use the Copernican metaphor of which Cohen is
so fond, the ego remains as the central sun round which
objects revolve. And certainly it does not at first appear
how this self-contained subjective world is to subsist
without at least this amount of foothold upon reality.
That only proves, however, that we have not realised
the inexorable logic of this line of thought. It will be
noticed that Cohen is careful, in the above quotations,
to speak of Kant's discovery as making the objects
revolve " round the forms of the mind," round notions,
not round the ego or subject. To speak of the ego in
this explicit fashion as a reality would be to assert the
existence of the ego as something more than simply a
function or aspect of conscious experience ; and that
would be to commit the unpardonable sin (in Neo-

1 Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, p. 253. I quote from the first
edition of 1871. I do not know how far Professor Cohen may have
modified his views or expressions subsequently. I am concerned with
his position only as illustrating the consistent development of a
particular line of thought.

2 Geschichte des Materialismus, II. 126.

23o BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

Kantian eyes) of " overstepping the bounds of possible
experience/' and setting up a transcendent thing-in-
itself as substance or cause. For, in point of fact, the
reality of the subject stands here upon exactly the same
basis as the reality of the object. The transcendental
object, according to the argument we have just followed,
is merely a notion or category which gives the finishing
touch to our subjective experience-world — by which, as
Lange says, we round it off — but which cannot possibly
carry us out of this experience-world to a Beyond.
According to this purely immanent Criticism, such a
Beyond simply does not exist. Now the subject is in
like manner a notion or category — the notion of notions,
the category of categories, if you will — but still just the
ultimate notion which puts the dot upon the i, and gives
the finishing touch to experience. Many passages may
be quoted from Kant as evidence that he regarded the
transcendental unity of apperception as a form evolved
in the process of experience, and a pure abstraction,
therefore, when separated from the process whose
formal unity it constitutes. Ignoring the difference
which exists for Kant between the transcendental unity
and the noumenal self, Cohen is not slow to utilise such
passages. " The ego," he says, " is so far from being a
substance, understood as a special productive faculty,
that it is resolved into a process in which it arises and
which it is. The unity of the action is at the same time
the unity of consciousness/' 1 He recalls to us that
Kant even abstracts from the actual existence of the
ego — in his frequent references — namely, to the ' I
think ' which must be capable of accompanying all my
thoughts. What kind of faculty is that, asks Cohen,
whose actual existence or non-existence may be dis
regarded ? Taking Kant's own example, he proceeds :
" The transcendental ego is a form of synthesis. . . .

1 Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, p. 142.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 231

The unity of consciousness arises in the synthesis of the
drawing of a line, and this synthesis consists in the
notion of quantity under which the line is subsumed.
Thus the transcendental apperception falls together
with the synthetic unity which is contained in the cate
gory. ... As space is the form of external perception
and time of internal, so the transcendental apperception
is the form of the categories. . . . The synthetic unity
is the form which lies as a common element at the basis
of all the separate kinds of unities thought in the
categories. The transcendental unity of apperception
(in Kant's own words) is the unity through which all the
manifold given in perception is united in a notion of the
object."

Here the wheel has come full circle. The tran
scendental object was first reduced to a radiation or
reflection of the subject, and now the subject has become
merely the unity of the object. Both, in fact, are simply
forms assumed by this " one all-embracing experience "
(to use a phrase of Kant's on which Cohen naturally
lays stress). They are not really separate facts or even
separate forms ; they are the Janus-faces of a single
fact called experience. Subject and object are forms
which this experience necessarily takes, and, as such,
they are described as transcendental conditions of the
possibility of experience, but they have no existence or
meaning apart from this immanent reference to the
experience whose forms they are. As Cohen says, sum
marising his own position, " the form is not a primitive
action ; it is a form in the sum of psychical occurrence
(im psychischen Gesammtgeschehen) , a form which pre
supposes other processes and coincides with part of
them."1 The transcendental subject, therefore, as a
real source and locus of experience, goes the way of the
transcendental object. It is just a form which the

1 Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, p. 162.

232 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

current of psychical events has a way of taking, but
from which we can infer no real being behind the psychi
cal flux, whose the experience is, or to whom the appear
ance appears. As soon as we attempt to do so, we
become the victims, according to Neo-Kantianism, of
an illusion precisely similar to that described by Cohen
in the case of the object. But though Cohen, as we have
seen, follows the same line of argument in both cases,
and reduces subject and object alike to forms of thought
to which no trans-subjective reality corresponds, he
stops short of branding the subject also as an illusion.
He does not write in a sceptical interest ; he proposes
this self-rounding world of Erfahmng or experience as
the one and all-sufficient reality. Kant's supposed
" theory of experience " is consistent Criticism — the
latest birth of philosophy ; and accordingly it would
be stultifying himself to speak of illusion, in so many
words, in connection with the supreme form of ex
perience.

Nevertheless it is perfectly apparent that the whole
structure hangs in the air. This purely immanent refer
ence of the categories and forms of thought leaves us
with no real being whose the experience is. This ' ex
perience ' or Erfahmngswelt has no locus ; it evolves
itself in vacuo, and in the course of its evolution evolves
the form of personality. Lange, who otherwise adopted
Cohen's results as true Kantianism and true philosophy,
was disturbed by this lack of any real basis, and entered
a mild protest against it. "If the emphasising of the
merely transcendental standpoint be carried too far, we
arrive at the tautology that experience is to be ex
plained from the conditions of possible experience in
general— that the synthesis a priori has its cause in the
synthesis a priori." * By the merely transcendental
standpoint Lange means what I have just called the

1 Geschichte des Materialismus, II. 126, 131.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 233

purely immanent or inward reference of the categories
and forms of thought — the proof, for example, which
deduces a unity as the condition of synthesis, but which
can say nothing of the unity apart from the act or
movement of synthesis of which it is, as it were, the
moving form. Such a proof, Lange says, in analysing
experience or knowledge into conditions which are con
fessedly abstractions except as realised in the act or
fact of knowledge, is really explaining experience by
itself — is at all events giving no account of the real
conditions on which the existence of experience at all
depends. Hence, he says, if the transcendental deduc
tion is to be more than the tautology indicated above,
" the categories must necessarily be something more
than simply conditions of experience/' In other words,
he is seemingly not content to speak with Cohen of ' the
notions ' round which objects revolve. The realistic
basis of the categories lay for Kant himself, of course,
in the noumenal self ; but for this Lange proposes to
substitute ' the physico-psychic organisation ' as the
source from which spring all the forms, notions and
Ideas which give rise to the appearance of a world in
space and time. The physico-psychic organisation is
thus the cause or ground of the appearance, and at the
same time it is that to which the appearance appears,
and thus we seem to secure a certain anchorage. But
Lange has learned his Neo-Kantian lesson too well to
admit that this organisation is a thing-in-itself. The
physico-psychical organisation is itself only an appear
ance or phenomenon, though it may be the appearance
of an unknown thing-in-itself. Hartmann has wittily
but not unjustly dubbed this position of Lange's mere
Confusionism.1 If the organisation is mere appearance,
we are no better off than we were with Cohen ; if, on

In his Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerianismus und Hegelianismus

234 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

the other hand, we are going to speak of a real being at
all, this problematical way of referring to it is absurd.
It is impossible to blow hot and cold in this fashion with
a ' perhaps.' Our view must either be frankly immanent,
in which case the subject is merely an epistemological
category, or it must be frankly transcendent, in which
case the subject is the real being in whom and for whom
the whole process of experience or knowledge takes place.
Lange's recoil from the consequences of Cohen's reason
ings throws an instructive light upon the nature of these
consequences, and therefore I have dwelt upon his posi
tion perhaps longer than its own merits justify. This
whole Neo-Kantian point of view is reduced to consist
ency by Vaihinger,1 who exposes the contradiction latent
in Lange's idea of the physico-psychic organisation. He
points out with inexorable logic that to hypostatise the
subject, even in this half-hearted way, is to fall back
into what Cohen calls Dogmatism ; the subject has in
this respect no prerogative over the object, both being
alike epistemological categories, limitative conceptions.
So far, it may be said, Cohen had already gone. Vaihinger
differs from him, or advances beyond him, in that his
attitude is essentially sceptical. " Critical Scepticism,"
he says, is the real result of the Kantian theory of know
ledge. The result of Criticism is purely negative ; it
is the self-dissolution of speculation (Selbstzersetzung der
Speculation), inasmuch as it restricts us rigorously to
the immediate world of subjective states. All philosophy,
he says again, has only intra-subjective significance ;
all thought moves in subjective forms whose objective
validity can never be verified, and whatever instruments
we employ to know reality, they are still subjective in
their nature. Criticism, therefore, or consistent Kan
tianism denies the trans-subjective validity of every
category and form of thought, and thus brings us back,

1 In his book, Hartmann, Duhring und Lange (1876).

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 235

in a more refined form perhaps, to the position of
Hume. Hume devoted the greater part of his industry
to showing how the illusion of a real world and a real
self would naturally arise, in the absence of the cor
responding realities ; how these illusions would weave
themselves out of the dance of detached and homeless
ideas. Similarly Hartmann has appropriately labelled
this last result of Neo-Kantian thought Illusionism.
" Ideas," said Reid, in view of Hume's results, " were
first introduced into philosophy in the humble character
of images or representatives of things. . . . But they
have by degrees supplanted their constituents and under
mined the existence of everything but themselves. . . .
These ideas are as free and independent as the birds of
the air. . . . Yet, after all, these self -existent and
independent ideas look pitifully naked and destitute
when left thus alone in the universe, set adrift without
a rag to cover their nakedness." In exactly the same
way, though along different lines, ' experience/ which
was introduced into philosophy in a doubly dependent
character, as the experience by a real being of a real
world — experience, which by the very structure of the
term seems to cry aloud for a real subject and a real
object — has substantiated itself as the sole reality.
First the object disappears before negative criticism,
and the world, as Hartmann puts it, is transformed
into the dream of a dreamer ; at this stage we have a
purely subjective Idealism or Solipsism. Then the sub
ject shares the fate of the object, and the dream of a
dreamer becomes a dream which is dreamt by nobody,
but which, if one may say so, dreams itself, and among
its other dream-forms dreams the fiction of a supposed
dreamer.1 This self -evolving, unsupported, unhoused
illusion is all that exists, t

1 Cf. Hartmann's Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen
Realismus, p. 47.

236 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

I am not aware that absolute scepticism or absolute
illusionism admits of any direct logical reply. But it
has hitherto been regarded, not only by the common
sense but by the enlightened common reason of man
kind, as a reductio ad absurdum of the line of thought
which leads to it. It is a result which we deliberately
refuse to accept as true. In face, however, of such a
sceptical dissolution of reality, we do not merely intrench
ourselves in this deliberate refusal, leaving the sceptic
in possession of the intellectual field. The nature of
the result leads us to examine the nature of the premises
and the principles of argumentation which have led to
it. This was what Kant and Reid both essayed to do
in face of the Humian scepsis. Now that a definite
development of the Kantian Criticism brings us face to
face with a subtler scepsis of the same description, a
similar course must be adopted ; we must endeavour to
lay our hand upon the fundamental presuppositions
which predetermined the evolution of thought toward
this end. In a preceding lecture we saw reason to believe
that this was to be found in the unwarrantable extension
given by Kant to the term ' experience/ and in his view
of the merely immanent use of the categories and forms
of thought. It is this idea of immanence which, in the
hands of his idealistic followers, swallows up the tran
scendent reference involved in knowledge — a reference
still maintained by Kant himself — and leads to the
fiction of an experience which is experienced by nobody
and is an experience of nothing.

The first essential, then, is to restrict ' experience ' to
its true and proper meaning. As soon as this is done,
it becomes apparent how impossible it is to take experi
ence as something self-contained, self-explaining and
self-existent. Those who profess to do so make matters
plausible only by illicitly importing into their professedly
pure experience a multitude of trans-subjective elements.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 237

Where, then, is the boundary-line to be accurately
drawn between pure experience and what transcends
experience, between the subjective and the trans-
subjective ? It is accurately drawn only when by pure
experience is understood my own conscious states — the
c stream ' of ideas which constitutes my mind in a
phenomenal or psychological reference. Everything else
is trans-subjective or extra-psychological — i.e., episte-
mologically transcendent. Limiting ourselves thus, let
us look at the nature of this immanent world. There is
a passage in Clifford's well-known essay " On the Nature
of Things-in-themselves " which seems to me to illus
trate in an apt and vivid way the characteristics of our
actual consciousness. It may be quoted without pre
judice, as it is introduced by Clifford and used by him
in quite another reference. " In reading over a former
page of my manuscript," he says, " I found suddenly
upon reflection that, although I had been conscious of
what I was reading, I paid no attention to it ; but
had been mainly occupied in debating whether faint
red lines would not be better than blue ones to write
upon ; in picturing the scene in the shop when I should
ask for such lines to be ruled, and in reflecting on the
lamentable helplessness of nine men out of ten when
you ask them to do anything slightly different from
what they have been accustomed to do. This debate
had been started by the observation that my hand
writing varied according to the nature of the argument,
being larger when that was diffuse and explanatory,
occupied with a supposed audience, and smaller when
it was close, occupied only with the sequence of pro
positions. Along with these trains of thought went the
sensations of noises made by poultry, dogs, children
and organ-grinders, and that diffused feeling in the side
of the face and head which means a probable toothache
in an hour or two."

238 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

Now all this sounds perfectly intelligible when the
different elements in the section of consciousness ex
amined are referred to their real causes, and recognised
as the effects of an independent world of causally con
nected things. But the richly variegated scene which
Clifford conjures up may serve to bring home to us the
hopelessly disconnected appearance which the simul
taneities and sequences of our psychological life would
present, were they not constantly pieced out and con
nected — interpreted in a thousand ways — by reference
to a system of extra-psychological realities. If the train
of thoughts and images seems to proceed for a time
with a certain orderliness, under the guidance of associa
tion, this sequence is accompanied by a mass of changing
organic sensations, which arise and disappear without
any reference to the chain of thoughts, and so far as
consciousness is concerned, have an absolute beginning
out of nothing and an absolute end. Or it may be that
our meditations are abruptly interrupted by a sight or
a sound — the sound of a street-fight, the entrance of a
friend, " the noises made by poultry, dogs, children and
organ-grinders " —by a percept of some kind, in short,
which, so far from having any connection with my
immediately preceding states of consciousness, is shot
from a pistol, as the saying is — projected headlong into
their midst in an utterly inexplicable fashion. The
same discontinuous and irregular character of subjective
experience as such is exemplified every time I turn my
head and bring into view objects undreamt of the
moment before. It seems hardly necessary to add
that this complete incoherence of the contents of con
sciousness as such is recognised by modern psychologists
as irresistibly impelling us to the hypothesis of a world
of trans-subjective realities.1 It requires, in fact, a

1 Cf., for example, Mr Stout's article on the Genesis of the Cognition
of Physical Reality. Mind, XV. p. 32.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 239

strong effort of abstraction to realise at all what the
state of affairs would be without such a supposition ;
for we involuntarily read a trans-subjective meaning
into these apparitions of our perceptive consciousness.
An intruding percept, which has no causal connection
with what preceded rt in my consciousness, we yet
accredit as a messenger from a world beyond — the sign
of a fact whose appearance just at this particular time
and place is perfectly determined by the real causal
connections of the trans-subjective world to which it
belongs. It is only as thus correlated with an orderly
trans-subjective world that I can possibly bring order
and connection into my psychological experiences.
Without this reference they are fitly compared to " a
feverish dream, which constantly breaks off and tacks
on afresh, without any indication how the individual
pieces are connected with one another, or whether they
are connected at all." l To talk of immanent causality
as existing in such a world is an abuse of language.
Nobody asserts a causal connection between his idea of
the sun and his idea of the warmed stone. The percept
of the sun may often undoubtedly precede the percept
of the stone, but just as often I may see the stone first
and the sun second. Moreover, I often have the percept
of the sun without that of the stone, and, similarly, I
may perceive the stone and a multitude of things may
intervene to prevent my perceiving, or even thinking
of, the sun. Between the one idea and the other there
is no regular connection, and indeed no man thinks of
asserting a causal relation between them. The causal
relation is between the real facts which are the con
dition of these two ideas — between the trans-subjective
sun and the trans-subjective stone. In this sense all
our causal judgments are transcendent, until we begin,
as psychologists, to study the subjective mechanism on

1 Hartmann, Grundprobletn der Erkenntnisstheorie, p. 55.

240 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

its own account. It is doubtless simultaneities and
sequences among our ideas that put us upon the track
of these trans-subjective connections ; but, once estab
lished, no appearance of A in consciousness without B,
or of B without A, or of A and B separated by various
intervening ideas — no one, in short, of the hundred
casualties to which the conscious sequence is exposed —
shakes in the least our belief in the continued validity
of the relation in the real world. And, it may be added,
unless from the beginning we transcended the immediate
data of consciousness — unless from the outset they
were taken not for what they are, but for what they
mean — we should not fasten either upon the regularities
or upon the irregularities of our experience as calling
for explanation. There would be nothing to explain ;
we should simply take everything as it came. We should
be mere historians of the course of conscious occurrences
that had made up our individual existence.1

Such then is pure experience ; this is what is actually
immanent. The actual world of subjective experience
only requires to be exhibited thus in its nakedness to
have its essentially dependent and symbolic character
recognised. It is only when related to a world of inde
pendent realities that these subjective phenomena
become intelligible. Nay, it is only in this relation
that knowledge, or the very conception of knowledge,
could arise. Such an independent and essentially trans-
subjective world is therefore necessarily assumed by
every philosophy. An examination of the various

1 So Volkelt says that ' knowledge ' from the purely immanent
point of view would consist simply " in einem Erzahlen der von
Moment zu Moment in seinem Bewusstsein vorkommenden Einzel-
vorstellungen." Properly speaking there would be neither thought
nor knowledge " sondern lediglich ein Berichten uber den absolut
zusammenhangslosen Spectakel den ich unbegreiflicherweise in
meinem Bewusstsein antreffe." Compare the fourth section of his
Immanuel Kant's Erkenntnisslehre, to which I am indebted in the
foregoing paragraph.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 241

theories of pure experience or pure immanence would
show that, however they may disguise it from them
selves, they all make this realistic assumption. But it
is not necessary for us to go further than Mill's well-
known ' psychological theory of matter ' — the modern
version of Berkeley and Hume. Berkeley's own theo
logical idealism is, of course, not here in point, because
sense-phenomena are there referred to the divine will
as a trans-subjective real cause, and so the all-important
epistemological step is made. But Mill, with Hume's
example before him, will not wittingly overstep the line
which severs experience from what is and must be
beyond experience. He has thus to supply a background
to the tangled confusion and abrupt inconsequences of
our actual sensations and at the same time to seem to
avoid making the epistemological transition from sensa
tion to something different in kind from sensation.
Though not itself actual sensation, this explanatory
supplement must be in a manner homogeneous and
continuous with sensation ; though e% hypothesi not
itself experience, it must hoist the colours of experience,
and so avoid the appearance of transcendency which
your true Empiricist shuns like the very plague.

Mill states the necessities of the case in a sufficiently
candid way, " What is it which leads us to say that the
objects we perceive are external to us and not part of
our own thoughts ? We mean that there is concerned
in our perceptions something which exists when we are
not thinking of it, which existed before we had ever
thought of it, and would exist if we were annihilated ;
and further, that there exist things which we never saw,
touched, or otherwise perceived, and things which
never have been perceived by man. This idea of some
thing which is distinguished from our fleeting impres
sions by what, in Kantian language, is called Perdur-
ability ; something which is fixed and the same while

Q

242 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

our impressions vary ; something which exists whether
we are aware of it or not — constitutes altogether our idea
of external substance. Whoever can assign an origin
to this complex conception has accounted for what
we mean by the belief in matter/' l Mill's own explana
tion is his celebrated theory of ' Permanent Possibilities
of Sensation.' No undue stress need be laid here on the
use of the term ' sensation/ as we are not discussing
the merits or demerits of a purely sensationalistic theory
of knowledge. Let us take it without prejudice in the
widest sense as equivalent to percepts ; for we find a
substantially similar theory in some of the German Neo-
Kantians, who refer in this connection to Mill, and use
indifferently such expressions as ' potential sensations/
' potential perceptions/ ' possibilities of perception/
'possible consciousness/2 It is altogether, therefore,
upon the ' permanent possibilities ' that the stress is
here laid. Mill makes matters so far easier for himself
at the outset by the trans-subjective assumption of
other selves. He then proceeds to resolve the physical
universe into actual and possible sensations, repeating
Berkeley's analysis in so many words : " I see a piece
of white paper on a table. I go into another room.
. . . Though I have ceased to see it, I am convinced
that the paper is still there. I no longer have the sensa
tions which it gave me ; but I believe that when I
again place myself in the circumstances in which I had
those sensations, I shall again have them ; and further
that there has been no intervening moment at which
this would not have been the case. . . . The concep
tion I form of the world existing at any moment thus
comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a
countless variety of possibilities of sensation. . . . These

1 Examination of Hamilton, p. 221 (3rd ed.). [Ch. XI., "The
Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External World."]

2 For examples compare Volkelt, Kant's Erkenntnisstheorie, pp.
160-189.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 243

various possibilities are the important thing to me in
the world. My present sensations are generally of little
importance, and are moreover fugitive ; the possibilities,
on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character
that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or
Matter from our notion of sensation." ' These certified
or guaranteed possibilities of sensation " —possibilities
guaranteed not only for me but for other human beings
— constitute, then, according to Mill, all that is real in
the physical world, when we abstract from the actual
sensations being experienced by the aggregate of sensi
tive creatures at any given moment.

We cannot, however, too carefully bear in mind that,
according to the immanent view of subjective idealism,
these possible sensations or perceptions are only actual
—i.e., only exist — in the moment of actual perception.
Minds and the experiences of these minds are, with Mill
as with Berkeley, the only two modes of existences (if,
indeed, Mill would distinguish between the mind and
its ' states of consciousness ') ; the essence of sensa
tions is percipi. Consequently possible sensations are
not to be conceived as constituting a separate genus or
mode of existence ; a sensation unfelt, a perception
unperceived, is a contradiction in terms. The possi
bilities of sensation have, therefore, a merely imaginative
or fictitious permanence, for, so long as they are not
realised, they simply do not exist at all — they are
nothing. That is, be it understood, what consistency
imperatively dictates. They cannot be more than this,
unless we leave the ground of immanency altogether
and pass to the real thing of which sensation is the
evidence. It is certain, however, that to Mill the per
manent possibilities mean a great deal more than the
' naked possibilities ' x which consistency allows him.

1 The phrase is Mr Stout's, in an acute criticism of Mill's doctrine
(Mind, XV. 23-25), to which I am indebted in this paragraph.

244 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

Mill's possibilities have functions assigned them which
only real existences can discharge. Modifications take
place, Mill tells us, in our possibilities of sensation, and
these modifications " are mostly quite independent of
our consciousness and of our presence or absence.
Whether we are asleep or awake, the fire goes out, and
puts an end to that particular possibility of warmth and
light. Whether we are present or absent, the corn
ripens and brings a new possibility of food. Hence we
speedily learn to think of Nature as made up solely
of these groups of possibilities, and the active force in
Nature as manifested in the modification of some of
these by others/' Now, we may fairly ask how a change
can take place in a possibility at a time when it is admit
tedly only a possibility — that is to say, at a time when it
does not exist. " A change in nothing," as Mr Stout
puts it, "is no change at all." Equally baseless is the
notion of one of these possibilities causally modifying
another at a time when, ex hypothesi, both are non
existent. The truth is that, under cover of the am
biguous term ' possibility,' Mill has covertly reintroduced
the trans-subjective reality. Real things may very well
be described, in reference to our experience, as ' per
manent possibilities of sensation ' — that is to say, they
are the permanent real conditions which, in appropriate
circumstances, are ever ready to produce sensations.
We may even go further and say that, if anyone is
determined to be a purist and to define things solely
in their relation to sensitive experience — solely from the
effects which he finds them to produce — this definition
of them as permanent possibilities of sensation is, per
haps, the most accurate we can hope for. And, of course,
if Mill's phrase is to be so understood, there is no further
difficulty about the extra-conscious existence and the
extra-conscious causality of these possibilities, for we
are back again upon the solid ground of trans-subjective

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 245

reality. But it is plain enough that this cannot have
been Mill's conscious meaning. " Otherwise," as Mr
Stout says, " he would have committed a circulus in
definiendo of the most inexcusable kind." It is equally
evident, however, that though Mill may not have in
tended it, no other meaning will suit the assertions he
makes about his possibilities. Under cover of the
ambiguity of language, and impelled by the realistic
instinct, Mill has simply reinstated the trans-subjective
reality in a different form of words. " Ungefahr sagt
das der Pfarrer auch, nur mit ein bischen andern Worten."
The theory, therefore, which seems so ingenious and
plausible indicates in truth the breakdown of subjective
idealism. The realist may feel tolerably easy when the
talk is of ' modifications ' taking place in our possi
bilities of sensation " mostly quite independent of our
consciousness and of our presence or absence." But he
would be a pedant indeed, who, instead of talking of
real things, insisted on substituting the circumlocution
' permanent possibilities of sensation/

It is not difficult to see how Mill, from his general
standpoint in these matters, was led to the phrase and
the theory. It is only in sensation, or say rather in per
ception, that the thing reveals its existence to me or to
others. I can only describe it, therefore, in terms of
precept ion ; when I do not perceive it, it does not exist
for me. So far as experience goes, I can thus manifestly
never get beyond the rubric of perception, past, present,
or to come. Hence Mill identifies the thing itself with
present and possible sensations. Exactly the same
line of thought leads to the substantiation of experience
and possible experience in the writings of the Neo-
Kantians. The nature or predicates of the thing can
only be learned in experience ; the Neo-Kantian accord
ingly generalises his different experiences of any trans-
subjective thing, and substantiates these as a pheno-

246 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

menal object. The world of such objects assumes with
him the same independent and trans-subjective position
as Mill's world of permanent possibilities, and with just
as little right. What we are to think of this professedly
immanent world we have already seen. This phenomenal
world, which will neither be subjective appearance nor
the frank trans-subjective thing, but suspends itself
in vacuo between the two, is a philosophical hybrid to
which no real existence or fact corresponds. These so-
called phenomena, in complete detachment from the
subjective consciousness of mankind, are epistemologic-
ally transcendent, not immanent, and the causality
which obtains between them is likewise transcendent ;
it is the causal action of one real thing upon another.

Is it not the case, in short, that the term ' experience/
as used throughout this espistemological discussion,
whether by Neo-Kantian or by English Empiricist,
covers a huge petitio principii ? The question at issue
is the possibility of a knowledge of the trans-subjective,
but I cannot experience the existence of another being.
I can be aware that another being exists, but its existence
can be experienced by itself alone. I know that you
exist ; my experience furnishes ground for believing
as much. But you are not part of my experience : I
do not experience your states. In short, I am not you.
Similarly, I know that something which I call the table
exists, because it resists the pressure I exert against it.
The table is the trans-subjective explanation of certain
features of my experience ; the table itself cannot strictly
be said to be experienced. The reality of everything
beyond my own existence is thus of necessity beyond
experience, for the experiences of each being are simply
its own states, its own life. By the use of this term,
therefore, in connection with knowledge, the trans-
subjective reference is cut off in advance before the
formal discussion begins.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 247

This is so neatly illustrated in our home-grown philos
ophy that I make no apology for using Professor Bain's
position to drive my argument home. Professor Bain
shall be answered out of the mouth of Mr Spencer. As
is well known, Professor Bain lays great stress, and
rightly so, on the contrast between passive and active
sensation as a source of our belief in an external world.
" Movement/' he says, " gives a new character to our
whole percipient existence/' " The sense of resistance
is the deepest foundation of our notion of externality." l
In this Mr Spencer is quite at one with him. But Mr
Spencer accepts this experience as the sufficient evidence
of ' an existence beyond consciousness ' — of ' something
which resists/ Professor Bain is more subtle. The
sense of effort and of effort resisted is no doubt contrasted
with ' purely passive sensation/ but the contrast is still
within consciousness. Our experiences of resistance are,
after all, just so many ' feels/ so many subjective
changes. " The exertion of our own muscular power is
the fact constituting the property called resistance. Of
matter as independent of our feeling of resistance, we
can have no conception ; the rising up of this feeling
within us amounts to everything that we mean by
resisting matter." Those ' feels/ then, are the material
world. " We are not at liberty to say without incurring
contradiction that our feeling of expended energy is
one thing, and a resisting material world another and
a different thing ; that other and different thing is by
us wholly unthinkable." 2 Or as he puts it more gener
ally — " knowledge means a state of mind ; the notion
of material things is a mental fact. We are incapable
even of discussing the existence of an independent
material world ; the very act is a contradiction." 3

1 Senses and the Intellect, pp. 376-7.

z Mental Science, p. 199.

3 Senses and the Intellect, p. 375.

248 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

All that Professor Bain asserts is true, is even obvious.
Unquestionably, so far as experience goes, actual and
possible perceptions sum up the case, and in the present
instance our feelings of impeded effort are all the ex
periences we have to show. The independent thing,
the ' something which resists/ is admittedly a rational
construction, a hypothesis to explain our experience ;
ex vi termini, therefore, it is beyond experience, though
necessary to it as its causal explanation. In short, the
Berkeleian analysis of Mill and Professor Bain is abso
lutely true as psychology ; but that the attempt should
have been made to substitute the psychological facts
for their trans-subjective conditions, and thus to pass
off psychology as ontology or metaphysics, is one of
the strangest results of super-subtle analysis. As Mr
Spencer puts it, " the very conception of experience
implies something of which there is experience." l The
' contradiction ' of which Professor Bain speaks is of his
own making, and lies in the impossible nature of the
demand he formulates. Mr Spencer's retort is simply
to state what the position amounts to. It amounts to
" a tacit demand for some other proof of an external
world than that which is given in states of conscious
ness " " some proof of this outer existence other than
that given in terms of inner existence/'2 States of
consciousness, in short, not only exist, as experience ;
they have a meaning, an evidential value, and can
testify to the existence of that which they are not.
Only in this respect, as symbolic and self -transcendent,
are ' mental facts ' to be called knowledge. But this
whole aspect of consciousness is suppressed in advance
by Professor Bain, who is really dominated by the curious
but deeply rooted idea that, in order to know a thing,
it is necessary actually to be the thing.

1 Principles of Psychology, II. 349.

2 Ibid., II. 444.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 249

The horror of the transcendent, which we have thus
seen alike in followers of the English and of the Conti-
tinental tradition, undoubtedly owes its wide diffusion
at present very largely to the influence of Kant, with
whose idealistic followers it has become a philosophic
superstition. But their doctrine of immanency, it may
be added, completely obscures the truth that is contained
in Kant's doctrine of the categories. These principles
pf_ reason werje_j)rjgin^ly^nj:enileji to lift us_out_of the
n^ or any purely empirical

theory^ This purpose is necess^jily^iistrated if they
are taken entirely in an immanent reference. Subjective
matter of sense may be transfixed as we please with
subjective principles of thought, but two subjectives do
not make an objective ; l the outcome is as purely
subjective as Hume's, though it bears a different com
plexion. Kant's own expressions, however, are not so
unambiguously immanent as his idealistic followers
would have us believe. They waver in a way which
is significant of two conflicting lines of thought in his
mind ; and in his doctrine of judgment, and of the
categories as the forms of judgment, he was at one time
upon another track. In truth he had struck here upon
the only path which can lead us out of subjectivity.
The passivity of sense does not carry us beyond our
selves ; only the activity of reason avails to do so.
Mental activity is summed up in the judgment and the
categories are different forms of judgment. In them
reason expresses its own necessities — its necessities of
connection and explanation. Through them it may be
said both to posit an objective world as an explanation
of experience and progressively to render that world

1 It is this difficulty, doubtless, which leads Kant at one time to
say that it is the addition of the categories to the pure subjectivity
of sense that yields us objects, while at another time he tells us that
it is their application to the matter of sense which confers objectivity
on the categories.

250 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

intelligible. In perception the conscious judgment re
affirms the instinctive judgment of feeling, and refers
the subjective affection to its origin in the real. From
the outset the stimuli of sense are thus projected—
attached as predicates to a real world, of which they
are at once the qualities and the effects. In this primi
tive judgment the categories of substance and cause
are combined, and these basal categories involve all the
rest. In this causal judgment we once for all overpass
the limits of the individual self. It was not without
reason, therefore, that Kant recognised in the judgment,
and in the thoughts of which judgment is the vehicle,
the instrument of our enfranchisement from subjective
bonds. But it becomes so only when it is frankly taken
in this trans-subjective reference. The categories do
construct for us an objective world, but only when they
are transcendently employed. Transcendental Realism
rather than transcendental Idealism was the result to
which the Kantian theory of judgment fairly pointed,
and many of his expressions may be read in this sense.
" All experience/' J he tells us, for example, " in addition
to the perception of the senses by which something is
given, contains besides a notion of an object which is
given, or which appears, in perception." So he says
again, " Cognitions consist in the definite reference of
given ideas to an object." 2 The notion of the object is
doubtless itself subjective, as Neo-Kantian subtlety
urges ; how, we may ask, could it be otherwise ? But
it is the notion of a real object, a trans-subjective thing.
It is the presence of this notion that differentiates what
Kant calls knowledge, cognition or experience from
sensation or what he calls mere perception. Or, as we
have been led to express it in the last few pages, the

1 Werke, III. 112 (ed. Hartenstein) . Experience is here used in the
specific Kantian sense as opposed to mere perception and the associ
ative play of ideas in the soul.

2 Ibid., p. 1 1 8.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 251

trans-subjective reference constitutes the very essence
of knowledge as distinguished from experience as a
series of subjective happenings which take place but
which mean nothing. Kant himself did not consistently
follow out this line of thought. But it is perhaps not
too much to say that a fresh interpretation of the cate
gories in the realistic sense just indicated is at the present
time the only promising basis of a sound philosophy.

CONCLUSION.1

So far, it may be said, we have not got further than the
knowledge that a trans-subjective exists ; that is to say,
our trans-subjective world is merely Kant's thing-in-
itself or Mr Spencer's Unknowable — an undetermined
causal somewhat, " a notion so imperfect," according to
Hume, " that no sceptic will think it worth while to
contend against it." But this sceptical relativism is
due to a misconception. If our categories are competent
to tell us that a trans-subjective world exists, they are
also competent to tell us what its nature is. It is true
that our categories are subjective, if it be subjective to
express the necessities of connection and explanation
which reason imposes upon us. But that they are
merely subjective is, in the nature of the case, incapable

1 [The preceding Lectures appeared in the Philosophical Review,
Vols. I., Nos. 2 and 5, and II., Nos. 2 and 3, between the dates March
1892 and May 1893. The author contributed to the same Review,
Vol. III., No. i (January 1894), a discussion entitled " Epistemological
Conclusions," the first part of which was occupied by a reply to
certain criticisms of his Lectures by Professor John Watson. He then
went on : " I will take the liberty of appending here a few paragraphs
in continuation of my four articles on Epistemology in this Review.
When the articles were originally given as a course of Balfour Lectures
in Edinburgh in the spring of 1891, these paragraphs followed im
mediately upon what has already appeared in the Philosophical
Review. They were omitted at the close of the last article because
the article already exceeded the usual length and had reached a
point at which its more immediate subject seemed concluded. But
I am now inclined to regret their omission, because by returning upon
the general argument I think they tend to place the scope of the
whole inquiry in a clearer light and to emphasise the precise nature
of the conclusion reached."

These paragraphs are accordingly restored to their original place
as the Conclusion of the Third Series of Balfour Lectures. — ED.]

254 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

of proof. They are principles of mental synthesis ; but
why should they not be at the same time principles of
real connection in a trans-subjective world — a world
whose real connections the mental synthesis only renders
or reconstructs ? The possibility of doubt, of course,
always remains ; for if we cannot prove dogmatically
that the forms of thought do not apply to reality, neither
can we prove that they do apply. The feat of comparing
our percept with an unperceived thing is, as Berkeley
incisively argued, for ever impossible ; we cannot get
behind our own knowledge and know without knowing.
Proof of this sort being impossible, we are thrown back
upon a species of trust or presumption — a trust that
knowledge in its fundamental characteristics renders
correctly the world of existence, or, to put it otherwise
and perhaps more simply, a trust that things exist as
we know them. In presence of an ultimate sceptical
doubt of the nature indicated, we are necessarily re
duced to a balance of probabilities. Now, to suppose
an absence of correspondence between the forms of know
ledge and the forms of existence — to suppose the mere
subjectivity of the former — is to suppose that the
mechanism of knowledge has been expressly devised to
defeat its own purpose. If we take the universe for a
bad joke, such a supposition will have much in its
favour, but it seems to me incompatible with any belief
in the rationality of existence. In other words, the
probability in favour of such a view is so small as to be
a negligible quantity.

The idea of merely subjective validity is a kind of
speculative nightmare, for which we have largely Kant
to thank. Yet we can see how it had been preparing all
through the modern period. The problem of knowledge,
when it comes into the foreground, inevitably tends to
separate the knowing subject from the whole world of
objective reality. The philosophical antithesis is no

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 255

longer between the whole and the part, between the
permanent unity and its dependent manifestations, as it
is when the line of thought is metaphysical or ontological.
The antithesis is now between the subjective conscious
ness and the world of real things. The subject is, there
fore, placed upon one side and the whole trans-subjective
universe upon the other, and a chasm is made between
them. The knower is practically extruded from the
real universe ; he is treated as if he did not belong to it,
as if he came to inspect it like a stranger from afar.
His forms of thought come thus to be regarded as an
alien product with no inherent fitness to express the
nature of things. Things are rather conceived as in
themselves independent of these forms, so that the
forms, when applied, are treated as an unauthorised
gloss, a distorting medium. A little reflection, however,
tells us that to conceive matters thus is to convert the
necessary duality or opposition which knowledge involves
into a real or metaphysical dualism for which there is
no kind of warrant. We are the victims of metaphor, if
we allow ourselves to think of the individual knower as
standing outside of the universe in this way, or if we
imagine a real chasm or gulf between him and the
objects he knows. The knower is in the world which he
comes to know ; and the forms of his thought, so far
from being an alien growth or an imported product, are
themselves a function of the whole. As M. Fouillee puts
it : " Consciousness, so far from being outside reality, is
the immediate presence of reality to itself and the inward
unrolling of its riches." 1 When this is once grasped,
the idea of thought as ' a kind of necessary evil ' ceases
to have even a superficial plausibility.

For I desire to repeat here, what was indicated in the
first of these articles, that the epistemological Realism,
the transcendency, the duality, of which so much has

1 L'Evolutionnisme des Idees-forces, p. 291.

256 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

been said, are not to be taken in the metaphysical refer
ence just alluded to. The two substances " separated
by the whole diameter of being," i which modern
philosophy inherited from Descartes, I take to be no
better than an invention of the enemy. It was the most
unfortunate error of the Scottish philosophers that they
identified the epistemological and the metaphysical
position. Their reassertion, as against Hume, of the
necessary trans-subjective reference in knowledge was
unfortunately supposed by them to be equivalent to a
reinstatement of the abstract opposition between mind
and matter as two absolutely heterogeneous substances.
But, if matter is defined as the precise (metaphysical)
opposite of mind — if we start with the presupposition
that they have nothing in common, that the one just
is what the other is not — the growth of the subjective
nightmare is perfectly intelligible. There is no reason
why we should expect the mandate of reason to run in
a completely foreign domain. No sort of knowledge,
indeed, would be possible of a world of things whose
relation to consciousness and the forms of thought was
conceived as mere negation. The opposition had already
led legitimately, in the history of modern philosophy,
to the denial of the possibility of knowledge, and was
not to be overcome by a mere assertion of the immediate
presence of the one to the other in the knowing act.
A real metaphysical dualism would cleave the universe
in two, leaving two absolutely non-communicating
worlds. The possibility of knowledge becomes, on the
other hand, the surest guarantee of metaphysical monism
— of a unity which underlies all differences.

The metaphysical position of Cartesianism into which
the Scottish philosophers thus relapsed was connected,
there can be little doubt, with the old mechanical or
deistic conception of creation and of the relation of

1 Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, II. 120.

BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM 257

God to the world of nature — matter being looked on as
something absolutely dead, absolutely undivine, except
that once upon a time an immense quantity of it was
' created ' and set in motion, since which time it con
tinues to exist as a kind of brute fact so long as its
' being ' is not terminated by another special fiat of its
Creator. I confess I know as little as Berkeley what is
meant by the being or existence of such matter, nor can
I conceive the possibility of any existence placed outside
of the divine consciousness and will in the manner
suggested. The feat is one which even a divine being
could not perform ; there is no region outside of God
into which he could extrude his creature and cut it
adrift from himself. The world of nature cannot be
understood by an intelligent theist otherwise than as
the ever-present working of a divine power. This is a
lesson which most of us have learned, as children of the
nineteenth century. But the abstract dualism of meta
physics was in its way a counterpart of the mechanical
theology which banished God from his own world, and
so made that world an unintelligibility to thought. The
world conceived thus, as a mere brute fact, is formulated
in philosophy as the unknowable thing-in-itself . It was
a survival of this dualistic feeling in Kant which led him
to scout, as he did, the idea of what he calls a preforma-
tion system, or pre-established harmony between the
mind and things, in respect of the categories and forms
of thought. He means by the phrase the possibility that
the forms of thought are both subjective and objective,
forms of the subjective intelligence and forms of the
real world at once. This supposition, which we have
seen to be so eminently reasonable, Kant sets aside
with an ill-concealed impatience that is somewhat
difficult to understand. But if the metaphysical hetero
geneity of the two sides is tacitly presupposed, then
unquestionably the notion of a pre-established harmony

R

258 BALFOUR LECTURES ON REALISM

does become no better than a deus ex machina, and you
have no guarantee that any such friendly, and as it were
miraculous, interposition has taken place. And in this
way, it seems to me, Kant's contemptuous treatment of
the idea may be understood. But the error lies in the
original supposition of heterogeneity ; it is this abstract
dualism which necessitates the mechanical idea of a
special interposition to establish correspondence. If
the first unfounded supposition is dropped, then harmony
does not require to be established by special decree ; it
has the presumption on its side. We may go further,
and say that when the matter is duly considered, this is
the necessary assumption of metaphysical thought.
Epistemological investigation, therefore, if it is not to
lead us back to the sceptical idealism, or to the impasse
of an Unknown and Unknowable, must tacitly presuppose
this metaphysical unity of the subjective and the objec
tive, or, to put it more strictly, the harmony of the
subjective function with the universe from which it
springs. Starting from this basis, Epistemology may
afterwards return to prove its own assumption, so far
as we can talk of proof in such a case. Epistemology
supplies the indirect proof that this is the only hypothesis
which can be consistently thought out without dissolving
in absurdity or contradiction.

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